Chapter 1: My life before Jesus
>> Shalom Aleichem. My name is Rabbi Kirt Schneider. I'm a Jewish believer in Jesus, and I wanted to share with you how I came to faith as a Jew in Jesus as the Messiah. Growing up, I was in an environment; I had no concept of who Jesus was at all. In fact, Jesus never entered my mind. And I'm not exaggerating that Jesus was so far removed from my world. I don't think I ever thought about him for a second in my life.
When I was about 19 years old, I remember I was sitting at a table with some business associates and somebody mentioned the name Jesus, and I just thought it was so strange and so weird. It was so foreign and unkosher to me. But what happened was I ran into a very difficult time in my life when I was 18 years old. Let me take a step back for a second, just to set the stage a little bit further. I was bar mitzvahed in a conservative synagogue in Cleveland, Ohio.
I grew up in a very, very Jewish environment. All my friends were Jewish growing up. I just one friend through my whole adult years that wasn't Jewish, wore a big cross around his neck, but not because he was a Christian. He was Italian. He was the toughest guy in the school. And I hate to tell you, I used to follow the guy around just to watch him beat people up. So all I'm saying is I had no Christian witness in my life.
No one ever talked to me about Jesus. I had never read the New Testament. No one had ever witnessed to me in my life. Once again, going forward, at 18 years old, I ran into a very difficult period. I was wrestling in high school, but I was such a serious athlete; I trained all year long. It's all I thought about. I was so disciplined. I lived it, ate it, drank it, slept it. The people in my high school, they all knew me as Kirt Schneider, the Wrestler.
I wore a medallion around my neck of a wrestler on it in my room. I had a regiment of all the exercises that I would do every day in my training. I remember when I was in 11th grade, I stepped on to the wrestling mat for our first practice and I had already lost 22 pounds before the first day of practice because I was that serious about dieting even before the season started. So I was consumed by this sport. And looking back on it, I think the reason I got so focused on the sport is it gave me identity and it also allowed me to feel good about myself because I was a good wrestler.
The other thing looking back, I realize it did for me is it made me feel in control because as I got older in life, I realized that the world was big and it was a dangerous place. You know, when we're young, sometimes we feel very safe and very protected in our homes if we come from a loving family. But the older we get, we start to realize that there are dangerous things in the world. I started, for example, reading in the newspaper of young people, teenagers my age, getting killed in car accidents. And it just scared me.
I mean, I was afraid of death. That is like the biggest unknown. And when you don't know what's going to happen, you're afraid of that. So I was very afraid to die. Try to push it aside. For me, it wasn't like I thought about it all the time, but it definitely was very profound, this fear of death. And then when I was 15 years old, I went with my friends to see that movie The Exorcist. And that movie so shook me up.
I mean, I was so disturbed and so afraid after seeing that movie. I had never been taught about a personal devil in Judaism. Going to the synagogue, they never talked about it. But I realized that they could not make a movie like The Exorcist unless evil really existed, because you don't have the ability to project such incredible, hideous evil if evil isn't out there in the universe somewhere. And when I saw that movie and saw that little girl in the movie getting possessed by the devil, I don't want to scare anybody here, but that's what it was.
Supposedly a movie based on a true story of a girl that got possessed by a devil. Again, I never heard about possession before, but when I saw that movie, it seemed like it couldn't have happened. That movie could not have been created unless something like that out there existed. So after seeing the movie, I thought to myself, how do I know that that same evil power won't take possession of me? And I didn't know.
I was terrified. In fact, shortly after seeing the movie, I shouldn't say shortly after seeing the movie. Immediately after seeing the movie, I'd go to bed every night, terrified, and for like a month I'd lay in my bed waiting for my parents to go to sleep. And then when I knew that they were asleep, I would crawl out of my bedroom and crawl into their bedroom and lay down on the floor next to their bed because I was too afraid to sleep alone. So there were some things going on in my life as I got older and things that I didn't know how to resolve.
And then, as I indicated, wrestling really made me feel secure and control felt in an environment where I was safe and affirmed. But when that ended at 18, as I alluded to earlier, that's when the world was pulled out from underneath my feet. I couldn't run from my fears any longer. And this identity that I had built for myself for like seven years wrestling, I started in seventh grade, so maybe it was a few years less, maybe five years. This identity that I had built for myself as a wrestler, it no longer held up anymore because I realized when I walked off the wrestling mat after wrestling that last match in high school that I wasn't moving forward to continue to wrestle people in my little secluded weight class.
I realized I was walking in now to a big world. I was all alone. I'm the oldest child. I was leaving home for the first time, and I wasn't going to be dealing with the world that all wrestled 119 pounds, which was my weight class. I was dealing with a huge world of wrestling, didn't mean a thing anymore. And so I went off to college, to the University of Tampa, even went off on a small wrestling scholarship.
They did end up dropping the program, though. But even though I was going to college and look like I was going to be able to continue my my path as a wrestler, it didn't it didn't give me any security anymore. And I laid in, I slept during those days. That first year at University of Tampa, I literally slept as much as I could just to try to escape my pain because I didn't know what to do. Again, I lost my identity, losing that sense of control that I felt when I was wrestling.
I just was afraid. I felt small. I just I just didn't know what the answer was. I thought about maybe becoming a doctor. I thought maybe that would help me to feel better. But deep inside, I knew that I did not have the aptitude to become a doctor. I was not a great student in high school, and I thought about becoming a lawyer and I said, well, maybe. But in the back of my mind, even at 18 years old, I somehow realized that if becoming a lawyer started would start to make me feel better again.
I was asking myself the question, but what's going to happen to you when you're 65 years old? In other words, I realized that even as my world fell apart when wrestling ended, I realized that if I built my life on a law career, that eventually I'd have to retire from that and I'd find myself once again in the same place I was at at 18. I'd be without purpose and lost again. So I was really grasping for straws. I did not know what the answer was.
So in desperation, I dropped out of college. I thought maybe if I make a lot of money, I'll start to feel better. I knew it wasn't the answer. I really did know it wasn't the answer, but I did know what the answer was. So grasping for straws, I thought maybe it would help a little bit. It'd be like a band aid. So I dropped out of college to open up a discotheque. This was in the 1970s. Discotheque were, they were really hot.
People were lining up around the block to get in discotheques in Cleveland, which was where I was raised. And I thought, if I find the right city that doesn't have a discotheque yet, it's going to be a gold mine. o my plan was to get investors, people that my family knew, people that I knew that I would run the discotheque, put it together, and then I'd be a part owner, since it would have been my idea and I would run it. So I knew the first thing I needed was a good business plan. And the first part of the good business plan was to find the right location, to find the right city.
So I got a job selling encyclopedias door to door, just as a temporary step to make enough money to travel around the country to be able to look for the right location for the discotheque. So I'm selling encyclopedias door to door. I'm researching the discotheque idea, and I come to the realization in a fairly short amount of time that I did not have enough business knowhow or savvy to pull this discotheque idea off. So I didn't know what to do, so I figured I'd just keep on selling books for a while until I can figure it out. So I'm eventually promoted to a sales manager with this company called P.
F. Collier Encyclopedia. So I have a team of people that I'm training and making commission off the people that I'm training as they're going out and selling encyclopedias. And I go to a sales managers meeting one night. There was about six of us, but myself and the other, another sales manager there, we were the first ones to arrive. We were alone before the others showed up. So this other sales manager starts telling me about a book he had been reading called Autobiography of a Yogi by a guru from India named Paramahansa Yogananda, who actually introduced yoga to the Western world.
And I was really fascinated by what the sales manager was telling me that he had discovered in the book. He said, this guru can beat up tigers with his bare hands and they levitate off the ground. And I always had kind of a mystical mindset. I think Jewish people are attracted to the supernatural, and I always believed in God. And so I went out and bought the book. It was the first book I ever bought with my own money.
So I'm reading this book. I'm looking at the pictures in this book of this guru supposedly levitating off the ground. And I'm thinking, God if this is real, if this guy can really levitate off the ground. I said I found my new wrestling. I found it. This is my new goal. Whatever I need to do, I want to do what I need to do to be able to levitate off the ground. Because I imagined in my mind's eye, I thought how great I would feel levitating off the ground.
And I thought, this is a way higher reality than making money. So I'm devouring the book. It was a big, thick book. I set up a little New Age temple in my bedroom because he was talking about meditating and looking for your third eye. So I'm sitting in my little New Age temple in my bedroom trying to concentrate on my third eye. In the meantime, I'm becoming more and more fearful for some reason. One night I go to sleep in my bedroom.
I'm living still in Cleveland, Ohio. I'm living with my parents. And it was a hot August night. It was 1978. And I remember going to bed this night, the incredible headache that I had before getting into bed. I go to sleep now. I want you to know I've never done LSD in my life. No one had ever witnessed to me. I had never read the New Testament. All that's happened in my life is I'm lost. I'm struggling.
I'm looking for answers. And I'm thinking somehow maybe if I can levitate off the ground like these Eastern gurus, I'll have maybe found the answer that I'm looking for. So I go to sleep this night. Hot August night once again, 1978. Then in the middle of the night, beloved, I'm woken from my sleep into what I would describe as a state of supernatural awareness. Suddenly I go from being unconscious in my sleep to now realizing I'm not sleeping anymore.
My eyes are closed, but I have like a heightened state of consciousness. I'm supernaturally aware that something's going on, a really high state of awareness. Then instantly in this state, in color, in a vision of the night, Jesus appears on the cross. As an American, I knew enough to know that the person on the cross was Jesus. I mean, I'd seen the Catholic churches. He appears on the cross again.
It's in color. I can see the terrain that the cross is staked in and there's people in the distance looking at him as he's on the cross, which is interesting to me because later, sometime later after this experience, a couple of years later, when I was reading the New Testament, I read that when Jesus was being crucified, there were people looking on from the distance. So I really believe that I was translated back in time, 2000 years, to witness the site of the crucifixion. So once again, I'm laying in bed, supernatural state of awareness. All of a sudden, I have a vision of the night, a vision Jesus appears to me in color.
I can see the ground. I can see the cross staked in the ground, people in the distance. And then a ray of red light from straight through the sky. A beam of light about this thick comes beaming down from above the blue from straight from heaven. The beam of light comes down through the blue sky right on to Jesus's head. And the vision lasted no more than a couple of seconds. But in an instant, I knew what had happened to me.
There was no thinking about it. I realized beyond a shadow of a doubt that God had just revealed himself to me and shown me that Jesus was the way to Him. I didn't know anything about what that meant. I didn't know anything about sin. I knew no doctrine, nothing. I was Bible illiterate when it came to the New Testament. But I knew from the symbolism God had just revealed himself to me. And when that beam of light came down upon Jesus, I knew that Jesus was the way to Him.
I looked at my clock radio. It was 3:30 in the morning. I got out of my bed, went to the restroom, got back into bed. I was excited because hope had come into my heart just like that. As soon as I had that vision, hope came into my heart. I remember I was lost. I was afraid. I didn't know who I was. I didn't have a goal in life anymore. But when that vision happened, it was like all those questions God solved.
I'm not saying that everything was solved completely, but it was like suddenly I was confident that God loved me and had a purpose for me. And regardless of what I was dealing with, I was going to overcome it. So I went back to bed. I got up the next morning. I started telling my family about it. Nobody reacted much at first and I had no idea what I was in for because in my home, in my Jewish home, we just never talked about Jesus.
I mean, there was no reason to ever bring his name up. So I was not aware of the extreme animosity towards him because he just was never brought up. So I'm all excited telling my family about this.
Chapter 2: Supernatural encounter
They didn't say a word and I knew a lot of people in high school. Even all my close friends were all Jewish. I still knew a lot of people. And I'm telling everybody about this experience because I'm so excited. Eventually somebody says to me a few days later or a week later, I don't know exactly how many days later. Someone says to me, you need to go get a New Testament. So I went to the store, bought the New Testament, started devouring the New Testament, and I realized that the teaching in the New Testament was different than that New Age book I was reading, Autobiography of a Yogi.
So I threw away the New Age book and I continued on with Yeshua. I continued on with Jesus. So that was over 40 years ago, and the Lord has done some amazing things in my life. The things that were destroying me, He broke off me. Not that I don't have to fight every day to keep gaining freedom and victory, but I am a totally changed person with soundness of mind, peace, a beautiful wife I've been married to for over 40 years, a thriving ministry.
Just I've been blessed in every way. And it's all because I follow Jesus. And before I let you go, I want to share one really impactful experience that I had about three years after this initial, what I would call, salvation experience. When I came to understand and that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. So I'm three years into this and I've been following him for three years, and I decide one day that I'm going to spend all day seeking God.
So I was sitting in a chair one day, all day long, just seeking the Lord. I'm listening to a Christian music. I'm praying, I'm reading scripture. I'm not expecting anything to happen other than the fact that I'm just hungry for God. I'm sitting in this chair and suddenly the spirit of God literally appeared above my head, just like in the Book of Acts chapter two. I saw Him with my own eyes, but it wasn't with my natural eyes.
It was somehow with my spiritual eyes. But I saw as clearly as I could see with my natural eyes and the way the spirit of the Lord appeared above my head, it was a spirit of life. It was spirit of life. It was in motion. I could not have helped the experience along. Neither could I have stopped it from happening, which is suddenly bam! God was there, twirling above my head in all the colors of a rainbow.
Just spiritual life, all the colors of the rainbow in the spiritual life. Then he came through my head. And again, I want to stress I couldn't help the experience along. I couldn't have stopped it from happening. It was just that sovereign. Bam. He came through my head. Then he came into my soul, my inner man. Somehow I just knew that there was something inside me that's different from my head because I felt him come through my head and fill and take possession of my inner man.
And then I audibly heard his voice and he said to me, I am a servant. And that totally marked my life
Chapter 3: A call to repentance
because it was such a supernatural encounter that I had when I was wide awake. And the reason I wanted to share that with you is that experience happened to me when I was going through what I would call a season of repentance. You know, repentance is an old-fashioned word. A lot of times people hear that word and they think of the dinosaur age. But what it means is simply that we turn from going our own way to follow God instead through his Son.
So I was going through a season of repentance in my life. I had gotten rid of my girlie magazines. I had stopped smoking cigarets, and I was really trying to clean my life up that I could follow Jesus. And it's really interesting to me that He came to me and fell upon me while I was going through this season of repentance. Jesus's first words were, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. So I just want to encourage you right now.
If you're listening to what I'm saying and there's just kind of a witness on your heart, you just sense that what I'm telling you is authentic and true. If you'll turn to Jesus as best you can by His grace to follow him, he's going to reveal himself to you, too. And you're going to have a remarkable supernatural life walking with a supernatural God that created you and loves you and I more than we could ever know right now.
