Sid: I have been so looking forward to this interview, it is with an Israeli, her name is Ayelet Steckbeck. Her husband who is an American, who is now an Israeli, his name is Sean Steckbeck. They both live in a suburb of Jerusalem. We’ll talk with Sean, who I have by long distance in Los Angeles right now, and Ayelet you’re in Nashville. I mean praise God for this technology. Ayelet I believe you are a first fruit of what is about ready to happen to the nation of Israel, and even Jewish people worldwide. I am so excited about because Ayelet when I became a believer in the Messiah, a little over 30 years ago, there were very few Jewish believers in the Messiah. It was like there was a wave of God’s Spirit, and a number of those that are leaders in the Messianic Jewish movement today came to the Lord at about the same time. For the last 30 years, outside of Soviet Jews, it’s been almost zilch as far as large numbers of Jewish people coming to the Lord. But I get reports from Israel, I know what I’ve done in the land of Israel; I know in the former Soviet Union hundreds of thousands literally, I don’t believe I’m exaggerating, of Jewish people have been making professions of faith. Something new is going on. I believe as our Mishpochah get to know you they’re going to get to know the new thing God is doing with Jewish people. Now you had a tough beginning Ayelet your mother died when you were 3 months old, you were living on an atheistic kibbutz, that doesn’t even make sense to most Gentile Christians listening to us. In the land of Israel how is there such a thing as an atheistic kibbutz, but that was more than norm I would think?
Ayelet: Yeah very much the norm.
Sid: Yet you had, somehow I don’t know how you got it, but you knew there was a God and you used to talk Him every day. How did that happen, where did that come from?
Ayelet: I have no idea where it came from, but I know since I remember myself as a little girl being4 or 5 years old I used to talk to God every day. I wouldn’t walk into the kindergarten as a 5 year old without first praying. Remembering just the feeling that He was my best friend, my closest friend.
Sid: You know… then we’re going to fast forward and your brother died as a soldier in Israel. Then you went into the army and all these emotions I guess when you’re involved in the army they all came to the surface. You were depressed and suicidal, and you moved to Jerusalem and you really wanted to die. I mean you’re a young girl you’ve got everything to live for, why were you so depressed?
Ayelet: I was very depressed like you said. I had a lot of emotions come up and I didn’t know what to do with them, and I just didn’t find any meaning in life. I still believed in God, but they seemed very distant in that depression. I didn’t have hope, I didn’t see any hope.
Sid: Then you had… had this happened before, you actually had a vision?
Ayelet: Yeah, I had, I even call it like an encounter with God because I never had something like that. One day when I was in Jerusalem and all I could think of was I wanted to kill myself. I suddenly saw a picture and I saw God sitting on the throne, and saw my soul as if I’d killed it coming before God’s throne. As He saw my soul He just weeped, and weeped, and cried, and He said “Why? Didn’t you know I could help you? Didn’t you know I wanted to help you?” He cried and cried and cried. That experience had just changed my life. I realized that the God I dared to believe in, even though all the people around me didn’t believe in Him, was real.
Sid: So what does someone raised in an atheistic environment that believes… you know what you believed in God, but this reality, I mean that gave you reason… did you want to kill yourself anymore?
Ayelet: No. I made a choice that day after the experience, I made a choice one to live and not die, and two, I made a choice to find out who this God really is; everything I can find out about Him, and what I need to do that when I do face His throne He won’t need to weep He will be able to accept me.
Sid: So what did do to find out more about God?
Ayelet: Well, being an Israeli in Jerusalem [Laughing] I went straight to the rabbis to look for answers. I became Orthodox, you know the whole spiel [Laughing], we say I kept kosher, I dressed modest. I went to what we call a Yeshiva, which is usually for men, but I went to a woman’s Yeshiva, which is like a Bible school for Orthodox people.
Sid: Hmm hmm.
Ayelet: I took different classes with rabbis, and then there was one rabbi he had a class about the Messiah and the end of times. God just used that class to give me His revelation that that was God’s plan to redeem the world was to bring Messiah.
Sid: Now before that class, did you know anything about Messiah?
Ayelet: No. I heard the name…
Sid: Well at Pesach, I mean in our family we used to open the door to see if Elijah was there to announce the Messiah was coming. We used to set a place setting at the table for Elijah. Did they do that in Israel?
Ayelet: They did that for Elijah, but there was no connection to Messiah from what I remember. It was just Elijah.
Sid: Well maybe that’s an American Jewish custom. [Laughing]
Ayelet: [Laughing]
Sid: So you started hearing about Messiah. What did they tell you about Messiah?
Ayelet: I don’t really remember everything the rabbi taught, but I know the main thing was it was an appointed man from God that was going to redeem the world. That was going to redeem that Jewish nation and all the world.
Sid: Is it true you started praying this Messiah would come?
Ayelet: Yes, [Laughing] I started really praying and interceding. I was a little since I was very small, I used to pray every day for my family and my friends. So in this point I started really praying for Messiah to come. We have this song in Hebrew it goes “Baruch Habah-ha, Baruch Habah-ha, Melech hom Meshiach.” It is “Welcome welcome, King Messiah.” I remember I would shout and sing for hours to welcome Messiah to come.
Sid: So you were praying daily for the Messiah to come, you were singing, and according to my notes the rabbis actually taught you that we needed to build a temple in us for the Messiah to dwell. I have never heard that before.
Ayelet: Something like that. The rabbis taught about, you know the scripture where it says “Build me a temple and I will dwell.” In the English translates “among you,” in the Hebrew the Hebrew word is “Bet tocham” which means within you. It could be within a nation, or it could be within an individual.
Sid: So you were really praying that God dwell inside of you?
Ayelet: Yes, yes.
Sid: My goodness you got to watch out what you pray. [Laughing]
Ayelet: [Laughing]
Sid: Okay, then I’m gonna fast forward, in 1995 you’re just walking along and what happened to you?
Ayelet: Yeah that was a few weeks after the rabbi taught that. I was walking in the street of Jerusalem after I prayed for God to come and dwell in me, and I felt a ball of fire coming in my back, and in the same time I heard a voice, an audible voice, in my ear saying “Now I am in you everything is going to be alright.”
Sid: You know God told me almost the same thing, except that this was after I was a believer, but the Holy Spirit said to me, it was almost an audible voice, “Everything is going to be alright.” The question I have is, was this an audible voice or just an internal thought?
Ayelet: I remember it as an audible voice, and it was twice I heard an audible voice.
Sid: A few days later you started doing something that will shock a lot of peoples theology, but what did you do?
Ayelet: [Laughing] I started speaking in tongues.
Sid: How did you even know what you were doing?
Ayelet: I had a friend that I didn’t know she was a believer, she never told me anything at the time. When I told her about this experience she told me that was the Holy Spirit that came in me, and she said the Holy Spirit has a language. So if I ever feel that I’m speaking a weird language just not… don’t worry about it it’s just the Holy Spirit language. [Laughing] It really happened.
Sid: Ayelet we’ll take a break right here, we’ll pick up right here on tomorrow’s broadcast. I have also on the telephone Sean Steckbeck, Ayelelt’s husband. Sean you and Ayelet have been passing out the Hebrew version of my book “They Thought for Themselves” in Israel, and in Los Angeles the English version. Why do you use my book
Sean: Because I think, hi Sid, because it is really really important for Israeli’s to read testimonies. This book is powerful because it gives short testimonies in each chapter. Israeli’s it’s hard to hold their attention, but each chapter is like a book in itself; it is like a small book and it really captivates them and are powerful testimonies.
Sid: You know Sean half a million of them have been distributed to Soviet Jews in the Russian language, and I know, I don’t think, I know this is God’s time to have mercy on Israel and the United States. Very few Jewish people have seen the English version of this book.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth