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Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
Enter into his courts with praise.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
We bid you welcome.
Baruch haba.
Baruch haba means welcome in Welsh.
You're on the ball.
It actually means welcome in Hebrew.
It also means blessed is he who comes.
Beshem Adonai who comes in the name of the Lord.
So you get a Hebrew lesson thrown in for the same price.
Thou art the Lord of glory.
Thou art the King of Kings.
Thou art the Son of righteousness with healing in the wings.
Thou art the Son of righteousness with healing in my wings.
Enter.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
Enter into his courts with praise.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving.
Enter into his courts with praise.
Rejoice and be glad in thy Creator.
Rejoice and be glad in the Father of lights.
Rejoice and be glad in thy salvation.
Rejoice and be glad in the ancient of days.
Rejoice and be glad in thy Creator.
Rejoice and be glad in the Father of lights.
Hallelujah, it is good to praise the Lord
and make music to your name, O God most high,
to proclaim your love and faithfulness all the day
and through the night.
La la la, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la la,
la la la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la la, la la la la.
You make me glad by your deeds, O Lord,
so I sing for joy at all your hands have made.
How great are your works, O Lord, Elohim, Baruch Hashem.
La la la, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la, la la la la.
Lamb of God, your mercy I have seen.
Lamb of God, your blood has washed me clean.
And now I can praise you all my days,
for through you I am of God, Lamb of God.
Lamb of God, in silence you were led.
Lamb of God, in innocence you bled.
And now I can praise you all my days,
for through you I am of God, Lamb of God.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
Oh, give thanks to the Lord.
Call upon His name.
Seek the Lord and His strength.
Glory to His name.
You don't need your song sheet anymore.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
Hallelujah, Hallelujah.
If you're able and willing, why don't you stand?
Hallelujah.
Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.
Amen.
Please be seated.
Thank you to our signing lady.
Oh yeah, she's got a lot more work to do, I believe.
Will you thank also Chrissie Rogers from Prayer for Israel.
Cheers.
It's only water.
It's good, thank you for joining in.
Isn't it good to worship the Lord?
And it doesn't always have to be a sort of a very po-faced,
dry, dead experience.
It also doesn't have to be a jumping about and going crazy experience.
Just to worship Him is wonderful.
So, are we set? Yeah, hello.
And in case you're wondering who I am, Helen Shapiro,
the one who was advertised to be here in case you thought it was something else.
If you were expecting a concert, my apologies, it's not a concert.
I'm here to worship with you, the Almighty God through the Messiah,
and also tell of what He's done in my life and to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
So that's quite a lot to get in.
But I'll tell you what, I think a good place to start would be here.
Funny, but it's true, what loneliness can do.
I've been walking back to happiness since I've been away.
I have loved you more each day, walking back to happiness.
Said goodbye to loneliness.
I never knew I'd miss you, now I know what I must do.
I shared with you, making up for things I said.
And mistakes to which they led.
I shouldn't have gone away, so I'm coming back today.
Walking back to happiness, I threw away.
Walking back to happiness with you, said farewell to loneliness I knew.
Lay aside, foolish pride, learn the truth from truths like Christ.
Spread the news, I'm on my way, oh yeah, yeah.
All my blues have blown away, oh yeah, yeah.
I'm bringing you love so true, cause that's what I owe to you.
Walking back to happiness, I shared with you.
Walking back to happiness with you, said farewell to loneliness I knew.
Lay aside, foolish pride, learn the truth from tears like Christ.
Spread the news, I'm on my way, oh yeah, yeah.
All my blues have blown away, oh yeah, yeah.
I'm bringing you love so true, cause that's what I owe to you.
Walking back to happiness, I shared with you.
Walking back to happiness again.
It fades at the end, thank you.
Thank you.
Oh dear, thank you.
Thank you, I've got to take another drop of water.
I'm not used to singing at this time of the day.
Thank you very much.
Glad you remembered that.
I included that for a couple of reasons, one very good one.
That is, well first of all it was one of a few hit songs that I had going for me.
38 years ago.
Oh dear.
I was only six months old at the time.
But out of all those hit records, and there were some good songs there,
that is the one that seems to have stuck most.
And I could never understand it because it was the one I always liked least.
It's no secret, I always said it.
When I first heard it I thought it was a bit corny and I thought oh no,
of course it became the biggest hit that I had, so what do I know about anything?
The thing is, I found out the reason why that's the one that stuck.
I mean yes it's a happy song, people sing along and they clap their hands.
But actually the reason it stuck with me, sometimes like a leech,
through all those years, the difficult years as well as the good years,
was because God loved it and he still does.
How do I know? I just know.
Because never has that song, the title, the lyrics, the feel of it,
been more true and more real than it is now.
Since I found him in 1987, and I suppose the word joy would be better
than happiness and walking with him, it's a total fulfillment.
So you see, God knows best.
He certainly knows a lot better than I do, that's for sure.
And I actually like doing that song now. I enjoy singing it.
He's given me a heart for it. So there's a testimony in itself.
So thank you. I mean I could have been lumbered with a really horrible,
miserable, horrible song.
So thank you for that, thank you for remembering.
Now I know how old you are.
Okay, well I'm here to tell you how I found the Messiah,
namely Jesus or Yeshua, to give him his Hebrew name.
How do you do Yeshua in sign language?
Oh, good. Praise the Lord.
I better give you a bit of background here.
I'm Jewish. I am still Jewish, even though I love
and have found Jesus as my Savior and as my Lord and my Messiah.
I come from a pleasant little hamlet just northeast of London called Hackney.
Oh, you've been there.
It's a grimy inner London borough.
And when I was born and brought up,
it housed one of the largest Jewish communities in the country.
And I was born, brought up in a warm, loving, traditional Jewish household.
Traditional, I say, it's always difficult one about traditional
because where does tradition or culture leave off and religion begin?
It's a very fuzzy area that within Jewishness and Judaism.
We weren't particularly observant.
We didn't go to synagogue every week or every month.
We maybe went once a year.
We certainly went for weddings and bar mitzvahs and so forth.
But that doesn't take away from one's Jewishness or belief, funnily enough.
But that's a whole other question for another night.
But I was very aware very early on of my Jewishness.
I didn't particularly understand what it meant.
I just knew that we did things a little bit differently
from what appeared to be the mainstream of the population in those days.
I used to listen to the wireless.
There's a giveaway, if ever there was one.
For you younger ones, that's the radio.
And I used to wonder why they had programs on the wireless
about churches and Easter and Christmas and stuff.
I mean, that was nice, but why they never had anything about us and what we do.
That's when I was told two very important things.
One, I was told, well, we live in a Christian country.
The other was that we, the Jewish people, are a very tiny minority in this country.
In the whole of the UK, less than 300,000, which is very small.
Yes, we make our presence felt.
But I, you know, so because we are a minority, so we didn't have stuff on the box.
Of course, things are a bit different these days.
I was brought up to believe in God.
It kind of comes with the territory.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Bible,
a bit of the Bible that I knew.
But I didn't know him personally.
He was there.
I don't think there was ever a time that I ever didn't believe in God
or something out there in some way.
As for this Jesus, I never heard of him until I was about six years old.
You see, I went to a state school, but because we were such a large Jewish population,
we merited, if you like, through numbers, our own separate assemblies and RE classes.
And those were the days, of course, when they taught the Bible in school.
I don't know what they teach now.
But so I never knew about New Testament.
I never knew such a thing existed.
We were taught the Old Testament, and I used to love the Bible stories,
all the hit stories, the creation and about the Exodus from Egypt,
Moses and David and all of that, and I loved all of that.
But I never heard of Jesus until I was standing in the playground,
minding my own business one day, at about six years old, like I say,
and this other little girl came running up to me.
Must have been Easter time, I guess.
And she was obviously in great distress, and she screamed at me,
I should have killed Jesus Christ. So that was my first introduction to Jesus.
Not very auspicious, you might think, but here I am, loving Him and knowing Him,
knowing Him and loving Him.
I was obviously very, very upset. I'd never killed anybody.
I'd never heard of this person with the funny name.
And I guess somebody somewhere tried to explain about all the perversions
of things down through the ages.
Anyway, whatever church she went to, they obviously weren't preaching the gospel.
But the thing is, I didn't hold it against her.
I guess I forgot about it until I became a believer, funnily enough.
I didn't hold it against Christians or against this Jesus.
I just got on with my life, and then I went into show business.
I was actually 14 years old.
And just got on and had my career, which has been going all these years.
Thank you very much.
And I didn't think much about spiritual things again until towards the end of the 60s,
when the world and his wife started to search for the meaning of life.
Man. Remember?
You weren't there, obviously.
It was like that. Everybody was going off on their paths for meaningfulness
and looking for themselves and finding other things on the way.
I am just so thankful that I didn't get involved in drugs or cults or anything like that.
But what did happen to me, you see, I had always had a curiosity
from a very small child about out there.
There must be something more than this physical material world that we live in.
I've always had that.
And so this started to come out about this time, and I started to get interested in,
well, my family had started to go to visit mediums and spiritists and spiritualists,
whatever you call them, to contact dead relatives and so forth.
So I kind of started to take an interest in that.
And over the years, going to visit the occasional medium or get my fortune told
and all of those things, and buy the magazines and read the books and so forth,
I developed my own system of beliefs, which incorporated a little bit of spiritism,
a little bit of Buddhism, a bit of this, a bit of that,
sort of a smorgasbord of stuff, much like, well, it's the same thing,
only a different heading these days, they call it New Age.
But I believed in all of those things.
They seemed to answer for me a lot of questions and fill some kind of void in me,
such as, is there life after death?
Well, I figured with all these beliefs, yeah, I guess there is life after death,
and that was very comforting.
Or maybe there's reincarnation and all of this kind of thing.
There isn't, by the way, but more of that later.
So I just went on with my beliefs for quite a few years, leaning on them for comfort.
Then one day I woke up and I was 40, and everything sort of changed from there.
It's funny about 40, it's a very significant figure in the Bible.
40 years in the wilderness, rain, fastings, you name it, and then stuff happens.
Well, stuff happened.
I got through the 40th birthday pretty well, I thought,
because I'd heard all the horror stories.
About a few months, six months, whatever, after that, something did happen.
I just got through telling you all of these beliefs that I believed in,
Spiritism and all of that.
Well, I woke up one morning and it was all gone.
I can't explain it other than there was nothing there.
I didn't believe anything anymore.
It was just nothing, which was a very serious business
because I had equated all of my beliefs, all these things, with God.
So if this stuff isn't there, then God isn't there, and what's the point of anything?
So at 40 and a half, a bit like that, and I started to think and worry and despair.
I was doing a lot of soul searching.
Why do I not believe?
I tried to believe, I can't explain it.
It was like there had been a statue and it was crumbling.
From this perspective, I know exactly what was happening at that time.
You see, God has set times and seasons for things.
He says so in the Bible, all over the place.
And I believe that that was a set time or season for me.
He wanted a deal with me and now he was ready to do it.
I believe what he was doing at that time was clear in the decks of all the stuff,
all my wrong and false beliefs to make way for what he had, which was the truth.
Of course, I didn't know that at that time, so there am I at 40 and a half, giving it this.
Now, at this time, nobody knew, by the way, any of this.
It was just my secret.
He knew, obviously, I didn't know he knew.
I had to go around to my musical director's house.
He was a Christian, still is.
I had to go around to his house to pick up some music from him.
And he, I better tell you that he and his wife had been Christians for a few years,
but they never shoved it down my throat.
They were very, very, it was very clear that they were committed Christians
and that they had a very strong faith.
And they would occasionally tell me stories, things of what the Lord, as they called him,
had done in their lives, things actually which were sometimes miracles.
And I, somewhere I acknowledged that, but I still didn't take on board fully what was going on.
You see, I never could consider this as an option for me.
Why? Because I'm Jewish and Jews don't believe in Jesus.
It's one of the things that defines a Jew.
What do Jews believe in?
Well, we don't believe in Jesus.
You see, that's the first answer.
So I could never consider what Bob, my musical director, had as something for me.
But this day, I went around to his house and he said he was going to be giving up the business
or thinking of giving up the music business.
Now I'm talking here of a top flight musician, a guitarist, an arranger, a writer, a composer,
who was thinking of just giving up.
I panicked immediately.
I'm going to lose my musical director.
I said, why?
He said, well, I think, I believe that God wants me to be a preacher.
Inside, I was going, get out of here.
Religious nut.
He thinks he's hearing from God.
I said, really?
He said, yeah.
So you're, if that, if you're going to, he said, yeah.
I said, really?
I said, now wait a minute.
I was being clever now.
Music is a gift from God.
Yeah, he said, you're right.
Oh.
He said, but sometimes, sometimes God asks us to sort of set it aside for a while,
whether it be forever or for a time or whatever.
And I said, do you think that's what's happening?
He said, yeah, I believe it.
So you're prepared to give up your livelihood,
the most important thing in your life apart from your wife and family.
I didn't actually say that.
This was in my head.
And he said, yeah, because you think God wants me to be a preacher?
Yeah.
And that impressed me.
I was so impressed with that.
I went back to my John, who was my boyfriend at that time, now my husband.
And I said, I don't know what it is that Bob's got, but I envy him.
I envy his faith.
There's me running around like a headless chicken looking for the meaning of life,
and he's so calm and sure and confident in this Lord of his.
And I'm thinking, I want what he's got.
I want what he's got.
It doesn't matter if I'm Jewish or not Jewish or whatever.
I want what he's got.
Listen, what's going on in my life spiritually at the moment is no great shakes.
What a coincidence, eh?
I don't believe in coincidences, by the way.
So I started to think about this Jesus.
You know, now I wasn't a lame duck, as it were.
By that I mean my career was going well.
I was doing my concerts, my jazz and my pop like I still do.
I was in this relationship with the man who's now my husband.
We had a nice house. We had all of that.
It's just that there was this emptiness.
It all gone.
I started to think about Jesus.
I thought, what have I got to lose?
I laid on my bed one night and I said, Jesus.
Well, I didn't know if I was going to get struck by lightning or something.
I said, Jesus, are you really who they say you are?
These Christians.
I mean, how can it be?
We would have known.
Surely, if you're the Messiah.
We're the ones who got promised this person.
Did we miss something?
Please show me if you are.
They say you're Jewish.
You're a rabbi.
How come they always portray you as this blonde-haired, blue-eyed
sort of Aryan, all right, man's interpretations.
But if you really are the Messiah, please show me.
I want to know.
Words to that effect.
Which was, I guess, a little step of faith in a way
to actually be talking to this person.
Nothing happened.
Not there in the room that night.
But something in the heavenlies certainly happened
because in the following weeks, everywhere I went,
everything I did, I was bumping into things and people
connected with this Jesus.
It didn't dawn on me straight away what was going on,
but it did seem to follow a bit of a pattern.
I'm supposed to be over here, but I find myself over here,
and over here is stuff about Jesus.
A church, a poster, a scripture, and Christians.
I was tripping over them.
I don't know where these people were coming from.
Out of the woodwork.
I never knew they existed in such numbers.
Stuff was going on.
This culminated after a few weeks in the day when I,
I guess I was being softened up, when I was coming back
from a concert in Germany with my band.
We said bye to each other and see you next time,
and this same Bob, the musical director,
put into my hand a book.
Now this is the first time he'd ever given me anything
in the way of tracts and tapes and books and so forth.
And I looked at this book.
I thought this is religious.
This is religious.
Be on your guard.
And I looked at the front of the book,
and it was a picture in glossy color of a menorah.
What's a menorah?
A menorah is a seven-branched lampstand.
You know the thing.
That which was made for the tabernacle, for the temple,
and which is the eternal Jewish symbol.
I thought why is he giving me a Jewish book?
I couldn't understand it.
I was still on my guard.
He said, I thought you might find it interesting.
I said, oh yeah.
My heart's banging away.
It said Betrayed was the title of this book.
Betrayed by a man called Stan Telchin.
And it said, how would you feel as a successful
50-year-old Jewish businessman
if one day your daughter told you she believed in Jesus?
Oh, Jews believing in Jesus.
And I was like, I shouldn't be seeing
with this subversive material.
And then I thought, wait a minute.
How did he know?
Bob, how did he know that I had been going around
and bumping into Jesus all over the place?
Of course, he didn't know.
He didn't know at all.
He and his wife had had this book for over a year.
They wanted to give it to me.
And every time they tried to, I didn't know, of course,
something stopped them.
This day when he handed me this book,
I was obviously ready to receive it.
Another coincidence.
And I was excited.
My heart was banging and banging.
I thought, I must read this book
about these Jews who believe in Jesus.
I said, oh, yeah, all right.
He said, yeah, yeah, you know, might enjoy it.
I found out later his heart was banging away as well.
I got this book home.
I couldn't wait.
I devoured it in a couple of hours.
And it was a wonderful story.
This man gets told this shocking news by his daughter.
She believes in Jesus.
He is like, he's a pillar of the Jewish community,
the synagogue and everything.
Very nicely, very respectable.
He's like, not for six.
When he finally recovers, you know, he says,
how could you do this to your family,
to the God of our fathers?
You betrayed us.
He sets out to prove her wrong.
And over a period of many months,
talking to different people, to believers and nonbelievers,
reading the New Testament, the Old Testament,
talking to Jews and Gentiles,
reading Jewish history, church history.
I learned a lot reading this book, I tell you.
He becomes a believer himself.
Along with every member of his family,
he had gone off to find out for themselves.
Wonderful story, very moving and very educational.
But the thing that really got me
and set me on to the next step, I guess,
were the messianic prophecies,
which he quoted in his book.
What's a messianic prophecy when it's out?
The prophecies concerning the coming of the Messiah,
which are found in the Old Testament.
Now, I'm a good Jewish girl.
I was familiar with all the hit stories,
like I mentioned before.
I knew all the characters from the Bible and so forth
and all the stories,
and I'd had a pretty good grounding at school.
And I knew that we, the Jewish people,
were expecting the Messiah, the Mashiach,
this personage who would come and make everything all right.
But I never knew he was so amazingly prophesied
and so specifically prophesied in the Hebrew Bible.
For instance, Isaiah 9, verses 6 and onwards.
It says,
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.
Now, I'd always thought that that was in the New Testament,
because I'd only ever seen it on Christmas cards.
But there it was, in Isaiah, one of ours.
I found out later they're all ours,
but that's a whole other evening.
And it says,
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
and he shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God.
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
I was gobsmacked.
They're making him God.
This Messiah, if this is Messianic, is somehow God.
I never knew that.
I thought this is a man.
I'm looking more at these quotations that he had.
Isaiah 7, it says,
And the Lord himself shall give you a sign.
Behold, the Virgin shall conceive,
and bring forth a son,
and call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
Now, please don't be offended,
but I had always thought this kind of Virgin birth thing
was a little bit un-Jewish.
We don't believe in things like that, you know, a Virgin birth.
We believe in the Red Sea parting,
and Elijah being carried away on a chariot, and so forth.
Actually, we don't even believe that half the time.
But virgins having babies, this is not a Jewish concept.
There it is in the Jewish prophet Isaiah.
I'm thinking, wow, I never knew this.
I never knew this.
I go on.
There's another one, Micah,
one of the so-called minor prophets.
Micah chapter 5, verses 2 and 3 and onwards.
And this is God speaking to Bethlehem, but thou, but you, Bethlehem.
Beth-lechem, house of bread.
Even though you are one of the little clams in Judah,
out of you shall come one to be ruler in Israel for me,
one whose goings forth are from old, from eternity.
I thought, that's it again.
Somehow he is divine.
He's eternal.
I never knew this.
I'm starting to get a little bit excited
and a little bit frightened at the same time.
Then I come to Psalm 22, which says,
Eli, Eli, lama, zavtanim.
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Now, I had seen by this time enough programs
about Jesus of Nazareth and so forth,
him hanging on that cross, that he cried out those very words.
Well, he was a rabbi.
He would speak out those words. Why not?
They are quoted and chanted every year in the synagogues
at Yom Kippur, at the Day of Atonement.
But ah ha, ha, ha.
You go further down, that very same Psalm,
and it goes on to say,
they have pierced my hands and my feet.
They have divided my garments among them
and I've cast lots for my clothing.
I thought, that's like a picture of the crucifixion, surely.
And then I'm thinking, well, how?
This is a Psalm written a thousand years before,
Psalm of David,
before any kind of Roman execution methods.
But there it was.
While I'm reeling from this,
I'm in place with Isaiah 53,
as if that wasn't enough.
The whole chapter of which speaks about
this one who is to come and take upon himself our sins,
our rottenness and wretchedness,
and indeed our punishment.
It says that the penalty,
the stroke that was due to us, fell upon him.
It says, for we all like sheep have gone astray
and the Lord has laid on him our iniquity.
That's what it says.
It says he was wounded for our transgressions.
He was bruised or crushed for our iniquities.
The chastisement for our peace fell upon him
and by his wounds we are healed.
And more and more and more to that effect.
I, by this time, I didn't know where I was.
I'm reading this.
I'm thinking, this is about Jesus.
It must be.
But how? How can it be?
How did we miss this?
How come nobody showed me this?
How come all I got was you killed Jesus Christ?
And I thought, I've got to find out, wait a minute,
because this is all like to me painting a picture.
I said, I've got to buy a Bible.
I didn't own a Bible.
Just to see if this stuff really is in there.
So where do you go when you want to buy a Bible?
W.H. Smiths.
I didn't know about Christian book shops.
Wouldn't have gone to one anyway.
I went into W.H. Smiths.
Into their like religious department.
And there were row upon row upon row upon row of Bibles.
Wall to wall, floor to ceiling.
I thought, where do I start?
There were fat ones and thin ones and tall ones and short ones
and different colored ones, different titles.
There was the Good News Bible, the Living Bible,
the New English Bible, the Jerusalem Bible,
the Oxford English Amateur Do It Yourself Weekly Bible.
Well, it may as well have been for all I know.
I'm thinking, which, you know, like, where do I start?
Will the real Bible please stand up?
I thought, wait a minute, and it came into my head.
Now, don't ask me where this came from, but I thought,
I know they all call themselves holy.
Holy.
Now, that's not a word Jews use.
They don't find one that doesn't call itself holy.
Don't ask me.
I really don't know where this stuff comes from.
Well, maybe I do.
I tell you though, I looked at this.
They're all called holy.
The Holy Bible, the Holy Bible, the Holiest of Bibles.
I'm thinking, no, no, no.
I just want like the Bible, please.
Finally found one.
The Bible.
It was a revised standard version,
which meant absolutely nothing to me
because I didn't know the standard version.
It had stuff at the bottom of each page
where you could, like, with the cross-referencing
and studying and stuff.
I thought, well, that's nice.
And it had pictures, which was even nicer.
I got this Bible home.
I opened it up to the Old Testament section,
and yeah, those prophecies were there.
There's hundreds of prophecies about the Messiah
coming as this suffering servant, as some would have it,
and all those kinds of things.
And then about Him coming again on the clouds of glory,
which is yet to come soon.
And I'm thinking, this is amazing.
Tons of stuff about a new covenant in Jeremiah.
I thought, this is absolutely amazing,
but it all seemed to point one way.
And you see, this Bible was one of those
that had that extra bit on the end
that you don't look at if you're Jewish.
It doesn't exist.
And yet all of these prophecies seem to point to Jesus.
I thought, I can't leave it there.
I've come this far.
I've got to do something.
I've got to look into that book.
Oh, forgive me.
I took my courage in both hands,
took the bull by the horns, shoulder to the wheel,
and I opened up for the first time in my life
to the New Testament.
Well, there's a good point for a song, I thought.
It's called A Cliffhanger.
It's on your song sheets if you want to join in.
I don't know what number.
We'll find it.
My soul wait thou only, only upon God,
for from him is my expectation.
My soul wait thou only, only upon God,
for from him is my expectation.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
I'm Messiah only.
He only is my rock
and the horn of my salvation.
Yes, my Yeshua only.
He only is my rock
and the horn of my salvation.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
You're on your own.
Yeah.
Amen.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
No, no.
Shema Yisrael, Adonai Elohenu,
Adonai, Adonai, Echad,
Baruch Shem, Kevod,
Mahoto, Leolam, Leolam, Vaed.
Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Blessed be his name whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
Yes, I shall not be moved.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
Yes, he is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
And he is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
Not be moved.
I shall not be moved.
No, no, no, my defense and my salvation.
The God of Jacob is my refuge.
He is my defense.
I shall not be moved.
Ah, but, you see, at that time, I didn't know about that.
I didn't know about defenses, fortresses, and refuges.
All I knew, I was about to take this giant leap into foreign territory,
and it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I opened up this New Testament,
this foreign book as I saw it.
Why trepidation?
Well, because the...
How can I be nice about this?
The church's record over 2,000 years towards the Jewish people has not been exactly spotless.
I say those who professed to be Christians down through the ages,
unfortunately, have perpetrated some horrors and awful things towards Jewish people
in the name of Jesus and in the name of Christianity.
So we don't come rushing to him, I'm afraid, and I didn't know what I was going to find.
A lot of anti-Semitic poison, I thought there may well be,
because that's after all where they get it from.
Imagine my surprise when I opened up this foreign book and discovered
the most Jewish thing I'd seen outside of the Old Testament, the genealogy of Jesus.
Have you read it lately?
Well, I'll tell you, I didn't expect to find that in there.
I found out from Stan Telchin's book that the candidate for Messiahship,
like they were queuing up, there's been a lot of false ones, of course,
had to fulfill certain conditions.
He had to be descended, first of all, from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
He had to be of the tribe of Judah.
He had to be of the royal house of David.
Actually, he had to be God, but, you know, I wasn't quite in there yet.
So imagine my comfort to see all these names, these familiar names,
in what I had thought was this foreign book.
It is not a foreign book. It's actually a Jewish book.
Did you know the New Testament is Jewish?
Well, I didn't.
It was important to me at that time to know that,
that this wasn't some appendage stuck on, didn't belong there.
I carried on reading, I began to read rather, in this book,
the Gospel according to Matthew.
I found out the word Gospel means good news.
I started to read, and then, of course, I say the Gospel according to Matthew,
but this was another hurdle I had had to overcome at some point,
whether it was then or before, I don't remember.
But I had always wondered why or how come in the Old Testament
you've got names like Ezekiel and Abraham and Josiah and Zechariah
and Solomon and Hezekiah, and in the New Testament you've got Stephen
and John and James and Peter, Trevor and George and Frank.
Just testing, I know it's after lunch.
God, dear.
I always thought the New Testament was written by Englishmen.
All right, make me a liar for a couple of Scots, James and Andrew, you know.
But actually, these men were Jews, and their names were Jewish.
They had Hebrew names, but it kind of got translated from Hebrew,
maybe through Aramaic, via the Greek, and down to us the way we are.
Nothing wrong with any of those names, by the way, all you Stephens and Peters
and what nots, I married to a John myself.
But in actual fact, Matthew was Matityahu.
John was Yohanan. Mary was Miriam.
Jesus is Yeshua, which means salvation.
It's another one of those coincidences.
James, always had a problem with James.
You know, I've traveled around a lot, stayed in hotels in different countries,
picked up the Gideon Bible, and there are always,
in all the other languages, James, who actually was Jacob,
Yaakov, retains a certain essence of his Jacob-ness in those other languages.
Only in English does he become James.
You never wondered about that? Hello.
I think King James authorized it myself.
It was all a plot.
Probably happened as it happened.
So yes, this is for you, your marriage.
But it was one of those things, you know, we laugh about it,
but in actual fact, these things could be stumbling blocks, cultural things.
We have Western perceptions and so forth.
I was coming at it from a bit of a different point of view,
even though I'm born and brought it up in this country.
So I'm settling down to read the Good News According to Matityahu
of Yeshua ben Miriam ben David ben Elohim.
I tell you, the immediate picture that I got just from the first few verses,
first couple of chapters was like, oh, it all seemed kind of familiar.
It sounds dark, but it wasn't foreign stuff to me.
There were these people living in the land of Israel
according to the law of Moses and doing what one would do.
I mean, I didn't expect to see it in this book.
But I started to read and there were things in there that surprised me all the way through.
But the one transcending thing was the person of Jesus
who was up there and out of there and over here very, very quickly.
I just was drawn to him like a magnet, everything he said, everything he did.
But to me, it was the most wonderful thing I'd ever seen.
And it wasn't easy. The things he said weren't easy.
He wasn't like just some new guru come along and said,
follow me and I'll give you an instant peace, man.
He said difficult things and yet you knew that somehow it was going to be all right,
that he could help you and it was wonderful.
And I read about the miracles he performed and all the amazing things he did
and how the disciples followed him, how he kept saying that he was going to be taken,
he was going to be executed and that he would be raised on the third day.
It didn't come as a surprise to him. It wasn't an accident.
It was going to happen and how he finally allowed himself to be arrested and taken
and mocked and scourged, horrible tortures and beaten up and all the rest of it
and finally was nailed to this Roman cross and lifted up there
and how he died on that cross at Passover time and how he was buried
and how on the third day he was raised from the dead.
And all the time I'm looking, using the stuff at the bottom of the page
to go backwards and forwards seeing where he was fulfilling different Scriptures
and all of that and it was like I'm getting drawn in.
And I got into Mark, I got about halfway through Mark, the Gospel of Mark
and I said, no, whoa, this is too neat, too beautiful, too pat, too right.
You know, this after all was a Bible that was translated by Christians
and you know, the Old Testament part of it may have been slanted a little bit
towards their way of thinking. I've just got to be a bit careful here.
I'll go buy a proper Bible.
So I went to a shop called the Blue and White Shop in Ilford in Essex.
A shop that sold, still does, Judaica, items of clothing and religious books
and all of this kind of thing. I thought this is where I'm going to find.
I've never been in there before. I go in face to face with yet another wall of books.
I didn't know where to start. I'm standing there for ages.
The guy, tall thin fella, I found out his name's Harvey.
He's serving another customer. I'm standing there for ages.
He's waiting for me. He finishes with the customer. He's waiting, he's waiting.
Finally he could contain himself no longer.
He comes over to me and says, can I help you?
I said, yes please. I'd like an Old Testament please.
He said, how old?
Which stopped me in my tracks somewhat because I thought he was joking with me,
which he actually was as it happens, but I thought, I've made a terrible mistake.
You don't go into a Jewish shop and ask for an Old Testament
because there's no such thing as an Old Testament,
because there's no such thing as a New Testament.
I said, you know what I mean. He said, yeah.
Of course he did. He was having great fun at my expense.
He reached up to a top shelf. He got hold of a book. He put it in my hand.
He said, yeah, that's what you're looking for.
I looked at the front cover and the spine of this book.
What did it say? The Holy Scriptures.
Have you ever come face to face with God's sense of humor?
That was my first time.
I thought, oops, holy is a Jewish word as well as a Christian word.
I got hold of that. I couldn't get out of there quick enough.
I was so embarrassed. I paid him of course.
I went home. I opened up this book.
There inside the Jewish Publication Society translated from the Masoretic text,
the books in a different order according to the Jewish tradition,
the law, the prophets and the writings, the table of yearly synagogue readings.
I thought this is it.
It was with sort of mixed feelings I opened up to find things
and to compare it with my revised standard version.
But I did and they were the same.
And never was anybody more relieved than I was that day.
I had so much of my life invested in this project, if you like,
that I don't know what I would have done had it not been so.
I don't even want to think about it.
So again I was comforted and I carried on my readings in this book.
I finished the Gospel of Mark.
I got into the Gospel of Luke.
I finished that all the while marvelling and marvelling.
I got into the Gospel of John and by the time I got to the end
of that beautiful Gospel according to Yohanan,
I knew without any shadow of a doubt which I guess that which I'd known
from maybe the first few words of the New Testament.
Jesus was and is the fulfillment of every prophecy concerning the Messiah.
Therefore He is the Messiah.
I knew that Jesus, Yeshua was the Messiah.
And I was like, it was just, it was mixed feelings because it was,
this is wonderful but also this is controversial.
I'm well known.
I'm Jewish.
What am I going to do?
I got on the phone to Bob and Penny, my Christian friends.
I said, help.
I think I'm on the verge of becoming a believer.
Those were the very words I said, I remember.
They by this time of course knew I'd been studying the Scriptures.
They had 12 churches praying for me.
I didn't stand a chance really.
I said, what shall I do?
They said, come over.
They must have been so excited.
Because this was me on my own with my Bibles and my book.
You know, just that.
I went around there.
I had questions, questions, questions, questions.
Not least, questions concerning my earlier flirtation as I call it
with what I found out to be the occult.
All of that stuff that I used to believe in before I found the Lord
comes under the heading of occult.
Now me, I'd always thought that occult meant in your face, devil worship.
Black magic, white magic, Satanism, witchcraft, Dennis Wheatley novels,
you know, all of that.
Well, of course it does.
But it also means the seemingly harmless and benign things of spiritual activity
with a small s that we think are just okay, such as spiritualism and mediums
and clairvoyance and all the rest of it.
I said, really?
They're telling me all this.
I said, really?
I said, well, where does God fit into all of this?
They said, he doesn't.
On the contrary.
And they proceeded to show me, Bob and Penny, from Deuteronomy
right the way through to Revelation where God is continually saying to the people
and therefore to us, you and your spiritists and your diviners
and your astrologers and your mediums are an abomination to me.
That says the Lord.
I tell you, that was news to me, but I was glad that it had all been taken away.
I realized then what had happened.
I said, my goodness me, I didn't know.
Most people don't know because the devil goes around masquerading as an angel of light.
He doesn't go around saying, here I am, the devil.
Sure, come to me.
This is good.
It'll do you good.
It's all wonderful and harmless and free.
It's not free.
I found that out.
I tell you, from that night onwards, and it took a long time,
I renounced and repented of all my involvement, however small, with those things.
I got rid of every book and magazine, every charm, everything to do with any of that stuff.
And I'm so glad that I did because otherwise I was coming against God.
I was fighting against God.
You don't want to do that.
God hates it.
I just want to tell you here, any of you here, and there are Christians who still do things
that they shouldn't do.
Either they know it or they don't know it.
I don't know.
But non-Christians, all of you here, anybody who has any little hankering even,
the slightest thing, however tentative or peripheral, of any of these things,
please know that it's against God that God hates it.
It's not from God.
It's from the pit of hell.
That's where it's from.
And it's deceiving millions of people.
Please know it.
It's the truth.
It's the truth because it says so in the Word of God.
So I just thought I'd throw that in there, nice little light thing.
But it's true.
People need to know.
Even if you read your horoscope, a lot of Christians do, in the newspapers, please know,
even though it's a big joke, that the enemy can use that too,
to get into your head.
Please just get rid of it.
Get rid of it.
You don't need it.
God is great and mighty and wonderful.
And He can do much greater things than that.
Amen.
I'm not here to major on that tonight, but it is important that we get these things right,
especially in these days.
Just to let you know before I go on that I'll be out here when I finish
and I'll talk to anybody who wants to pray to receive the Lord, who has questions.
There's maybe one or two counselors here too.
There might probably be others who know much more about that side of thing
that I've just spoken of than I do, if you want to talk about that.
Or about anything else.
Anyway, I went on to say to Bob and Penny, after I cleared that up,
I said, look, I believe in Jesus.
I believe that He is the Messiah who was promised.
I said, I also believe He is the Son of God.
I have no problem with that.
He was born of a woman with no earthly father.
He is the Son of God.
Yes.
I said, I also believe He is God, the Son.
I have no problem with that.
A lot of people do.
I don't have any problem with the plurality of God.
I mentioned Elohim earlier.
It's quite amazing.
The amount of times in the Bible the Lord refers to Himself in that way.
And if He wants to reveal Himself in that way, then who's going to stop Him?
We do like to put God in a frame.
We can't understand it.
I'm happy not to understand it.
If I could understand God, He wouldn't be God.
Let Him be.
Let Him be God.
And let Him do things the way He wants to do.
He knows best.
He made all of us.
And I believe that He sent that part of Himself to earth that we call the Word
and clothed Himself with flesh, became man, and dwelt among us.
And He was 100% man and 100% God.
I don't understand it.
It's wonderful.
And that He did all the things that He did.
I believe He cast out demons.
I believe He healed people.
He made the dead rise.
And I believe He died on that cross.
He knew it.
He came for that purpose.
And I believe that He died dead on that cross.
And that He was buried in a rich man's tomb, just like it said in Isaiah 53,
and that on the third day He was raised from the dead.
Physically, in some glorious way that again we can't explain,
but we will know because we're going to be like Him.
I said, I believe all of that.
I believe He appeared to all the disciples and to many, many people
and ascended into heaven, and He is sitting at the right hand of the Father.
I said, I believe all of that.
Now tell me why.
Somewhere along the way I had lost the why of it.
And I very patiently, through a lot of it through the letter to the Hebrews,
began to explain to me the why of it.
And I kind of cottoned on.
Jesus, among other things, was and is the fulfillment of the sacrificial system.
The sacrificial system being that which God instituted
when He created this nation called Israel for Himself.
God is holy. He created us to be holy, all of us, men and women, but we're not.
And yet He says to us, be ye holy, for I am holy.
Adam and Eve, the first humans, sinned against God.
They got kicked out.
And after that, you'd have thought He'd have done away with a lot of us.
Because He created them holy in some way.
He could be close to them.
But He didn't. He had a plan.
He got hold of this fellow Abraham and his son when He had him, Isaac,
and his son when He had him, Jacob, and his twelve sons when He had them.
They became, eventually, after 400 years in a hothouse in Egypt,
the nation that God called Israel.
He brought them out of the wilderness with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.
And He sat them there in the wilderness.
And He said, Be ye holy, for I am holy.
That's a hard thing to do.
How can we be holy?
But God, in His grace, said, I've got a plan for you.
I'm going to use you.
You're going to bring light to the nations.
But this is my standard.
And He gave them His law, what we call the law, the teachings.
And His standard, the only way that you can get right with God.
And God says, this is the only way.
I can't help it. I'm God. I'm holy.
How are you going to get up to here?
I'll tell you what we're going to do.
And He gave a way, in His grace, for men to have atonement for their sins.
He instituted this way, whereby an innocent animal, or even a bird,
would be slaughtered, a spotless bird or animal,
or sorted on a specially ordained altar in a specially ordained place,
by a specially ordained priest in a specially ordained way,
and that the blood that was shed would, in some way,
make atonement for the soul of the person, the family, or the nation who brought that.
It says in Leviticus chapter 17 verse 11, for the life of the flesh is in the blood.
And I have given you the blood upon the altar to make atonement for your souls.
For it is the blood that makes atonement for your souls.
God doesn't change. He is not a man that He changes His mind.
He still requires blood as a sacrifice.
It sounds yucky, doesn't it? But He requires it.
No amount of good deeds, righteousness, charitable acts,
are going to get us brownie points with God.
He says so. He still requires blood.
But thank God, all of that, all of those sacrifices,
are foreshadowing and pointing towards the once and for all sacrifice
that Jesus made of Himself on that cross, that time in Golgotha, in Jerusalem.
That's what it was all about. He was the fulfillment of all of that.
God didn't expect us to be slaughtering animals in the street through the ages. No.
He said, this is it. It's for your sin because you're sinful.
That's how you are. You're sinful. You disobey. You're rebellious. You're stiff-necked.
Jesus died on the cross. And at the moment that He died on that cross,
and He said it is completed, at that very moment,
the curtain in the temple in Jerusalem that divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place
tore itself in two from top to bottom. That was a thick curtain.
It tore itself in two from the top to the bottom, indicating that we all,
who would accept as it were that atoning sacrifice, could come in and get right with God
in the Holy of Holies, the throne room, the very throne room of God.
You know, before that day, there was only one person who could go into the Holy of Holies.
That was the high priest, descended from Aaron, Moses' brother.
And even he could only go in on one day a year, the day of atonement,
in fear and trembling with the blood of bulls and goats,
to sprinkle them the blood on the mercy seat itself,
to make atonement for the coming year for the sins of Israel.
But when Jesus Christ died on that cross, He became the new high priest of a new order.
And that sacrifice availed not just for Israel, but for the whole world.
And not just for the coming year, but forever.
That's what that was all about. He was the fulfillment of the lot.
He took the sins of the world upon himself and became the sacrifice, the man, God, the new covenant, blood.
The precious stuff, the most precious stuff in the universe, the blood of Yeshua, at that day.
And something new happened, the new covenant, the Brith Hadasher happened, whereby all could enter it.
As simple as that. I said, at last, it's clear to me.
It wasn't like just somebody had a good idea one day. It's for all of us.
That moment, Bob and Penny said, would you like to pray a prayer and ask Jesus to come into your life?
I said, oh yeah. I didn't know that you kind of did something like that.
And then I found out, of course, yes, well, you would. You would make a commitment in some way.
There's plenty of people go around believing in Jesus, and they think they're Christians.
But actually, to be a Christian, whether you're a Jew or a Gentile,
Christ being Messiah, Messiah being Christ, Christian being Messianic, requires something more.
It requires a response, an action or a reaction.
People think they're Christians because they're born in England.
Oh yeah, I was born in England. Or because they were sprinkled as a baby.
Very scriptural. Or because they're not a Jew or a Hindu or a Muslim, therefore they must be a Christian.
Not so. Nobody is born a Christian.
There has to be something that goes on in here, a change, new life, new heart, repentance, acknowledgement of sin.
That night, I found out I was a sinner, first of all. I kind of knew.
But I found out, like for sure, that whatever good things I did, I'd still be a sinner in the sight of God.
I prayed a prayer, though. They led me in a prayer where I said basically,
Jesus, I thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. Thank you for taking the punishment that was due to me.
I don't want the wrath of God upon me on Judgment Day.
Please forgive me for all my sins. I turn away from them. That's what repenting is.
To turn away, to change your mind. I repent of my sins. I'm a sinner. That's it.
Please forgive me. Wash me clean. Because His blood does more than just atone, which means to cover.
It washes it away. As far as the East is from the West.
I said, wash me clean by your precious blood and come into my life and be my Lord
and reign and rule in my life by your Holy Spirit and other part of God, the Ruach HaKodesh.
Take the reins. You do it. Change me into what you want me to be. You do it all. I give my life to you.
That was basically the gist of it. I want you to be, please, my personal Savior.
I don't want religion. I don't want to know about you. I want you. I want to know you.
And that night, August the 26th, 1987, 10.30 p.m.
That's exactly what happened. Now there weren't any thunderbolts and lightnings, but I knew that I knew
that He had answered my prayer. I just there was a peace and a knowing. I can't explain that.
Also, I knew from Scripture, He says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If you open to me, I will come into your heart and sup with you and be with you.
God keeps His promises. He did that that night. That night I got born again.
She used that phrase. How dare she? Do you know what?
The media have made such a pig's ear of that phrase. They've made it such a devalued joke.
And I say, I'm not ashamed to say I am born again because Jesus said, You must be born again.
He said, Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
That's what He said. So take it up with Jesus next time you pray, if you pray.
Born again means spiritual rebirth. I'm a spiritual baby. I'm now actually nearly 12.
So I'm still trying to get it right, but I make a lot of mistakes. But He has changed my life.
He turned it upside down, inside out. He has done so much in my life since then.
Everything I do is permeated by Him. I seek Him every day first.
And I know that I am saved from my sins. And I know He's doing a work in me.
It's going to take a lifetime and onwards. But I know Him in all the trials and tribulations of life.
And there are many. He's there, living in my heart. He's with me. He answers my prayers.
And I'm very, very thankful. Just a little side note here to let you know that I also wrote to Stan Telchin,
who wrote that book Betrayed. At some point along the way when I saw it was inevitable that I was going to believe.
Dear Mr. Telchin, if I become a believer in Jesus, will I stop being Jewish? It's a real fear. We have.
Down through the ages, there's always been Jewish believers, of course.
But they weren't necessarily encouraged to keep their Jewishness, as it were.
Oh, give up all that pagan Passover and celebrate Easter with us.
Some of you might recognize the irony in that. Maybe not.
I am very thankful that I came to know Him.
Stan Telchin wrote to me and said, don't worry. Don't be daft. You're not going to stop being Jewish if you believe in Jesus.
It's the most Jewish thing you can do. When a Jewish person receives Jesus, Yeshua, as Messiah and Lord and Savior,
they're not stopping being Jewish. They are fulfilling their Jewishness.
They are fulfilling what they were there for in the first place. Coming through to the Messiah of Israel.
The Jewishness is completed by the Messiah Yeshua, Jesus.
What is more, they are returning to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And what is even more, when a Jewish person receives Jesus, he or she has been grafted back in to the olive tree
of the faith of the patriarchs that Paul speaks about.
And I'm sure you all know this. In Romans chapters 9 to 11,
and he speaks of the olive tree, where a Jewish person who comes to know Jesus is grafted back in as one of the natural branches
which had been broken off through unbelief. I'm one of those who's been grafted back in to that olive tree of faith,
the faith of Abraham. Alongside, this is the great bit, all those wild olive branches,
the Gentile believers, took you a while, who have been grafted in to be together, Jew and Gentile.
One body, one picture, the olive tree, the body of Christ. It's such a wonderful thing.
And only in him, the Prince of Peace, can this happen.
The Sar Shalom, because of the love of Yeshua. Here's a song about that.
One day you're going to know about it. From the inside.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Yeshua, vast and measured, boundless free,
rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me,
is the current of thy love, leading onwards, leading homewards to my glorious rest above.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Yeshua, spread his praise from shore to shore.
How he loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore. How he watcheth o'er his loved ones,
die to call them all his own. How for them he intercedeth, watcheth o'er them from the throne.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Yeshua, vast and measured, boundless free,
rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me. Underneath me, all around me,
is the current of thy love, leading onwards, leading homewards to my glorious rest above.
How he loveth, ever loveth, changeth never, nevermore. How he watcheth o'er his loved ones, die to call them all his own.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Yeshua, love of every love the best,
is an ocean vast of blessing, tears are heaven sweet of rest.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, tears are heaven of heavens to me, and it lifts me up to glory,
for it lifts me up to thee.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, oh, your love is one.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast and measured, boundless free.
And that's the whole point. I could stand here and tell you about how there are more Jewish people coming to know Jesus
in these days than at any time since the first century A.D.
and all those tens of thousands of the first Christians who were Jews.
I could stand here and tell you that Jesus himself was a Jew and still is, and is coming back as the lion of the tribe of Judah.
But what I want to tell you about is the grace of God.
I always thought that word grace meant graceful, but it means unmerited gift, undeserved favor.
It's free. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus the Messiah.
That's one thing I found out. It's free.
I stand here before you today, a sinner saved by the grace of God.
That sounds like, wow, this is real religious stuff, but it's true.
I didn't earn it. I cannot earn it. We cannot earn it.
I'm speaking to you people who don't know the salvation of Jesus yet.
I bless you. We don't know it. Even some Christians don't even know it.
We still want to earn it, don't we?
If anything I've said here today has touched any of you in any way, shaken you up a bit, encouraged you, discouraged you, I hope not,
provoked questions, answered questions, please don't go out of here, please, without coming and talking to me
or somebody in authority who can speak about these things to you
because this is an important subject. What you're hearing here is the good news, the good news of Jesus.
If there's good news, there has to be bad news.
My challenge to those of you who don't yet know Jesus is when you go out of here,
if God forbid you should be run over by a car or a bus or anything or have a heart attack or something like that
and you should die, can you be sure you're going to go to heaven?
You're going to go to a good place. Can you be sure?
If you don't have Jesus you cannot be sure.
I am 100% sure where I am going.
Not because I'm so good, I'm not. I'm not good. I'm a sinner, sinner, sinner.
But God is good. He gave me His grace.
You only know it because it's written in His Word and because I've received it and His Holy Spirit has told me.
And it's because I have received the gift that He holds out to me.
I say it again, you cannot buy it. You cannot earn it.
We love in our pride to earn, to merit things, but we can't.
We can only receive. God says, here, take this gift. It's eternal life.
And we say, oh no, I'm not worthy. I'm not good enough. He says, that's right. Take it. It's a gift.
Oh, but I've got to be ready. I'm not ready yet. I've got to get myself right and ready so that I'm good enough.
No, no, no. Just take it now. We don't understand it.
God is offering the gift of eternal life. He wants all to be saved.
Saved from what? Saved from our sins. Saved from the result of our sins.
There's a lot of preaching about God is love. God is love. He also is judge.
And there is a judgment to come.
He is righteous. You don't want to stand before him without the blood of Jesus covering you.
All you have to do is repent, turn away from your sins, acknowledge that he is the Savior,
that he died for your sins, and receive him in your life.
And seek his forgiveness and receive his forgiveness. And that's it.
And you say, but that's much too easy. Yes, it is. It's easy. That's because he did the difficult part.
He did it. And then let him work in you. Then you can do your good deeds.
So that's my challenge to you. Because there is heaven and there is hell.
I want you all to go to heaven. God wants you all to go to heaven. Heaven being where God is.
Heaven being God. It is a place. It is real. God's love and joy and light.
And everything that is wonderful is there.
Hell is where God is not. And it is a place. It's not this earth. It's another place.
Where there is weeping and sorrow and torment. And it's forever and ever and ever.
And God says, I don't want you to go there. I want you to be with me.
I can't say it clearer than that. Jesus did it. He is the only way of salvation.
There are not many paths to God. That's what the world would have us believe.
Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through me.
And that is the truth. It's a narrow way. But it's true. And it's wonderful.
Here's a song.
There is someone who really loves you.
There is someone who really cares.
There is someone who's been waiting.
He's been waiting for you for years.
There is someone who really knows you.
And he knows just what you need.
And he wants to make you happy.
Make you happy and free.
And he doesn't care at all what you've said or what you've done.
Because he's got the kind of love that just goes on and on and on.
There is someone who understands you.
And he wants to dry your tears.
There is someone who's been waiting.
He's been waiting for you for years.
And he knows the way you feel.
Because he's seen just where you've been.
And he wants to heal your heart.
If you would only let him in.
It is Jesus who really loves you.
It is Jesus who really cares.
It is Jesus who's been waiting.
He's been waiting for you for years.
Thank you.
And he knows the way you feel.
Because he's seen just where you've been.
And he wants to heal your heart.
If you would only let him in.
It is Jesus who really loves you.
It is Jesus who really cares.
It is Jesus who's been waiting.
He's been waiting for you for years.
Thank you. Shalom Aleichem.