Sid Roth welcomes Ayelet Steckbeck

SID: Hello, Sid Roth, I’m here with Ayelet Steckbeck, this is a Jewish woman that was in an Orthodox Yeshiva, that’s a school of higher learning for women in Israel, and guess what happened? She says, Yeshua, that’s Hebrew for Jesus, came to her. What does an Orthodox Jewish woman do when that happens? Ayelet, you weren’t always an Orthodox Jewish woman, you were raised on a secular kibbutz, that’s a communal type of living situation, but how in the world on a secular kibbutz, where they are all probably atheists, did you have a belief in God as a young child?

AYELET: I don’t know how, but since I remember myself I always knew that God was real, I always know He existed and that I had had a personal relationship with Him. I remember as a little girl, four, five years old, I didn’t walk into the kindergarten before I prayed, and I remember you know when I grew up a little bit older around twelve years old I started praying every night for all my family.

SID: Now you had some tragedies as you grew up, your mother died when you were just a baby, just an infant, your brother died as a soldier in the Israeli Armed Services, and then you got called into the army and it seems like the whole world started collapsing, explain.

AYELET: Yes, the way of the family was always to just keep going, a lot of things happened in our family, and I just, as a child, I really suppressed all my emotions and when I went to the army under all the stress everything came up, I became very depressed and I became suicidal, I had no hope, I still believed in God but He seemed very, very distant.

SID: I would think that a lot of Israelis are suffering what you have explained simply because suicide bombers, you get in a car you don’t know what is going to happen, you go to a wedding you don’t know what is going to happen, if must be a pretty tough thing for a young person to be alive in Israel today.

AYELET: Yeah, sometimes it is and people have different ways of dealing with it but from time to time we see people just collapse emotionally.

SID: And that’s what was going on

AYELET: And that’s what happened to me.

SID: But something changed that, a surprise! A mystery guest spoke to you, what happened?

AYELET: After I left the army it still kept coming, the whole suicidal thought, and one day when I visited a friend in Jerusalem I sat outside and all I could think of is I wanted to disappear, I wanted to die. And I suddenly say a picture of what would happen to me if I killed myself, and I say God sitting on the Throne, and I saw my soul as if I killed it going before His throne

SID: As if you killed your own soul, you committed suicide?

AYELET: Yes, and as He saw my soul He started crying and weeping and I said, “Why?” And He said “Didn’t you know that I can help you? Didn’t you know that I want to help you?” And He kept crying and weeping, and the picture left, and I was left on the stairs and of course I was weeping. And that experience has changed my life. I realized that the God that I dared to believe in as a child, in very atheist atmosphere was real. I realized that He loved me, that He cared and I realized as well that He could have not received me; I understood that when you die you face His Throne. And I understood that He was weeping because He was not able to receive me if I would have killed myself. That day I made a choice to live and I made a choice to find out who this God really is and what is my part as His daughter.

SID: Now of course a Jewish person in Israel who makes such a choice there is really only one option they are aware of and that is traditional or Orthodox Judaism. Now you really went from secular, suicidal, to becoming an Orthodox Jewish woman and going to a woman’s orthodox Yeshiva, school of higher learning, what was that like?

AYELET: Yes, it was very, very different than everything I was used to, I started dressing different, I word a long skirt, I kept kosher, kept Shabbat, and everything was different. And I started going to Yeshiva to learn.

SID: You heard for the first time in your life about the Messiah at the Orthodox Yeshiva, explain.

AYELET: Well the Rabbi, you know we hear the word messiah but we never understood what it really meant, I never understood as a secular Jew, but in the Yeshiva there was a Rabbi that had a course, we had one class that was about the Messiah and the end of times, and in that class he taught about what the Messiah will be and what is really His part and His role. And God used that to give me the revelation that that was God’s plan for the redemption of the world and I took it very seriously, I thought, God if this is what You want to do, I am going to pray for this to happen. and we have a song in Hebrew that goes (Hebrew words) Welcome, welcome King Messiah. And I would sing that song and I would shout for hours for Messiah to come.

SID: You also had a Rabbi that taught you that our body is like a temple for the Messiah to live in. What effect did that have on you?

AYELET: Yeah, he taught about the scripture, it’s a little bit different translation, but the scripture says, “Build me a temple and I will dwell in it,” in the English it says among you. The word in Hebrew is (Hebrew word) within, so he said God wants to dwell within us, within a nation, or within an individual, and the Rabbi said that God wants to dwell within each one of us. And again I took it very seriously and I said, “God if You want to dwell in me You are welcome, come and dwell in me.”

SID: Were you praying for the Messiah to come every single day?

AYELET: I think pretty much so. SID: I mean watch what you are praying for, I mean in an Orthodox Yeshiva in Israel she is praying Messiah, come, come live inside of me, and guess what? He heard, don’t go away, we’ll be right back after this word.