SID: Hello, Sid Roth here, welcome to my world where it is naturally supernatural. My guest, Dr. Michael Brown, and Michael went out on the streets of Manhattan and asked the key question, the operative question, “Is Jesus the Jewish Messiah?” Let’s find out what these people thought.
I really think he was a great man and he was misinterpreted, my opinion, but it is only my opinion. I’m not sure there is a Messiah, come or not to come, I’m not that certain of it; that is part of our Jewish mythology. Well I think unfortunately that most, most people don’t know the authentic Torah verses, so you have a lot of Jews who they themselves are not, don’t know the authentic Hebrew, so see a lot of the things were actually mistranslated.
Hello, Sid Roth here again with Dr. Michael Brown, and Mike when I see that obviously religious Jew, patting his baby and saying, well listen now, the English translations, they don’t do justice and besides Jews don’t even know it, but if they knew it the English translations are wrong, it reminds me of a young Jewish man they used to call, Drug Bear?
MICHAEL: Drug Bear
SID: Drug Bear, I’m looking at him right now. Tell me how Drug Bear ended up in front of an Orthodox Rabbi who says, “Young man, you don’t even know Hebrew.”
MICHAEL: You know I was just a few blocks from where that man was speaking, that last man was in Brooklyn, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, I was just a few blocks from that man in 1973 with ultra-orthodox rabbis, the long beard, the black hat, the black coat, telling me that very thing, “You don’t even know Hebrew, you can’t rely on any of these translations.” What had happened to me was this heavy drug user, they called me Drug Bear, Iron Man, because I was so crazy with my drug use, 15-years-old was shooting heroin, 16-years-old this decadent lifestyle, stealing money from my own father and thinking I was a basically good person.
SID: By the way you father was what, a state Supreme Court justice?
MICHAEL: He was the senior law assistant in the New York Supreme Court, working directly with the judge, in fact almost because a Supreme Court Justice. And my mom and dad happily married, Jewish family, I had a good upbringing, I got caught up in the whole counter-culture movement of the sixties, drugs, rock music, the whole bit, rebellion, and then something happened, my two best friends, Gentiles, started to go to a little gospel preaching church, because two girls were going that they liked and their dad had been praying for them for years, so little by little God started to work in their lives, I didn’t like this, we were going to be a great band, we were going to be rock stars, and so I went to this little church to pull my friends out. Now bear in mind, I was completely irreligious, I didn’t care about God and I definitely didn’t believe in Jesus, I didn’t believe in Jesus any more than Mohammed or Buddha, but God started to work in my life. I never experienced this in the synagogue the few times I would go to a conservative synagogue, I never experienced this, people, I found out years later, began to pray for me. People say, “Well I don’t’ believe in God.’ Hey, God is real. People pray, I didn’t even know they were praying and God started to make me uncomfortable with my lifestyle. I used to boast about all the drugs I did, I used to boast about breaking into a doctor’s office or a home or betraying my best friends, now I started to feel miserable about it, God was dealing with me. A couple of months later I went back to that church again, and something actually happened, the light went on, I can’t explain how but I knew.
SID: You know I had that same type of thing happen to me, I just knew, I mean and sometimes when I first shared this I thought I have to have something spectacular, but the spectacular wasn’t outside, it was inside.
MICHAEL: Yeah, I tell you what happened, I knew Jesus was the Messiah, I knew he died for my sins, he rose from the dead, but I had a problem, I didn’t want to change. I didn’t want to give up my drugs. So I prayed a stupid prayer, November 12th, 1971, I said “God, if you don’t want me to get high tonight, when I get home and shot heroin,” actually cocaine it was, “when I go home and shoot cocaine and use these other drugs, don’t let them have any effect on me.” Stupid prayer but that’s what I prayed. Well I went home and tried to get high, I ingested a large quantity of drugs.
SID: You’re Drug Bear, I know.
MICHAEL: And nothing happened. So then I battled six weeks, high one day, going to church the next, back and forth, and then December 17th of 1971, I experienced the love of God the way that was indescribable, I experienced a joy in my heart, a joy that was different than drugs, a joy that was different that friendship, a joy that was different than sports or music or just doing good, it was on a different plane and I realized, “look how much God loves you.” He loves you enough to send his son to die for you in your filthy play in the mud, and now I was washed, I was cleansed, I felt like he had put me in these beautiful clean robes and I was going back out and playing in the mud.
SID: What did your parents think about this, your nice Jewish parents?
MICHAEL: Well they looked at it with curiosity that I was going to a church, it was meaningless to them. But when I came home that night I said I will never put a needle in my arm again. Do you understand when I experienced the goodness and love of God it was powerful enough that I said this thing that has been a mountain in my life, is my lifestyle, I will never touch it again. And when I went home and told my parents they didn’t know what to make of it, they at first laughed, I told my dad I got saved, he said hallelujah, he didn’t know what to make of it. But then they saw I’m changing, my whole lifestyle is changing, my head is not clouded from smoking pot day and night, and I am not messed up with all these other things, they could see a change in my life, I am becoming a decent human being again, so now it is time to go to the rabbi.
SID: Of course, now who sent you to the rabbi, your parents?
MICHAEL: My dad of course.
SID: But he didn’t’ even, he was a secular, what’s the deal?
MICHAEL: Because when you are a Jew you don’t believe in Jesus, that’s like betrayal, that’s, you know our ancestors died rather than do something like that. So I go in to meet the local rabbi, he is a new guy there, he is about ten or eleven years older than me, fresh out of the seminary, nice guy, befriended me, we began to interact, and I remember I was talking to him one time and he said, “You don’t know Hebrew.” I said, “Well I can rely on the dictionary until I learn it. I rely on the dictionary in the back of Strong’s Concordance in the meantime.” And he said, “Meantime schmeantime,” I remember those words, “If you don’t know Hebrew it doesn’t mean a thing.” So I’m starting to feel, I mean I know God has changed my life, I remember the time I had hives all over my body, you know that whatever I was reacting to I had come down with them, and it is terrible, you are itching all over, you’ve got these blotches all over you, and it happened to me when I was first a believer and I thought I had to be praying with someone for God to hear me, I didn’t think he would hear me if I was by myself, I was so new I didn’t know anything, so I went to the doctor and they gave me this medicine and it took 24 hours even to begin to have an effect, and finally I seemed to be over it, I was driving to school on the bus one day and suddenly I realized oh no, this thing is braking out, I’m not over it, it starts to spread up my arms and you know you can see it, it was winter time and when I rolled my sleeve up I said oh no it’s blotches all over my arms, and I thought I don’t even have the medicine, and if I did it doesn’t work for 24 hours, now I am in a minor panic because this was miserable, and I am at school, so I grab the guy, also a brand new believer, also Jewish, and I said, “Agree with me in prayer,” because I thought I had to have someone else to pray, I was so new, and we prayed and the next minute kids started coming in the classroom, two minutes later I rolled up my sleeves, all the blotches gone. I mean every last thing disappeared.
SID: So you didn’t know Hebrew but you knew how to get rid of the blotches on your arm, but guess what? He is now a PHD from New York University, a secular university, in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, and he speaks, reads or writes twelve Semitic languages, and let’s find out now that he knows Hebrew better than the rabbi what he thinks about those prophecies.
