SID: Sid Roth here with Ayelet Steckbeck, an Orthodox Jewish woman in an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Israel, is handed a New Testament. She knows she is going to get into trouble if anyone sees her reading this New Testament, but she just had a compulsion to read this, but Ayelet, you told me that earlier when you heard about the oral law, the Talmud, that you were not that interested in it, why?
AYELET: Well, we started learning a little bit of it and I understood that mainly it is different opinions of Rabbis, and some of them you know, were wise, but it was opinions of Rabbi’s so I didn’t want to accept it as a word from God.
SID: Okay, so you are hiding away so no one sees you reading this little New Testament and what happened next?
AYELET: Well I read the New Testament and one of the amazing things that happened is that I had so many questions that a lot of the Rabbis could not answer, or didn’t know what to do with my questions, and Yeshua with His teachings had an answer to each question that I had.
SID: So you are reading it, you are, from what you are telling me you are falling in love with this Yeshua, and what happened next?
AYELET: Well the next thing, it was few days before Yom Kippur, and Yom Kippur was a tradition in the community where I was for the single women to go to the mikveh, a mikveh is a Jewish baptismal for purification and I went there and while I was under the water my mouth just opened in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. SID: Did anyone hear you?
AYELET: No,
SID: Okay now some strange things are going on, I mean did you plan to say that?
AYELET: No, not at all.
SID: It’s almost like the supernatural language; it just came out in English or in Hebrew this time, so you were invited back to this prayer house and what happened.
AYELET: Yeah, that was on Yom Kippur and I went to the prayer house and in the prayer I just saw Yeshua, He just stood before me and opened His arms and said, “Welcome.” Nobody led me in the sinner’s pray, years later I heard someone do it so I just covered it just in case, but in that moment I received Jesus embrace.
SID: Think back to that moment, what was that like?
AYELET: It was very new, a little bit confusing, but amazing.
SID: You know Ayelet is not aware of this, but the prayer house she went to, the woman that ran it, she is in heaven now, but I knew her, she was a friend of mine, Ruth Heflin, and Ruth used to tell me that just in the New Testament, it talks about a Rabbi by the name of Nicodemus, who came to Yeshua, that’s Jesus at night so no one would see what was going on, she told me that many rabbis over the years were just like Ayelet, they were coming to her at night and becoming believers in the Messiah. Now many years ago I had a dream and this is the only dream I’ve ever had in which God Himself came to me, and He told me more Jewish people would come to know Him through my book than anything I had ever done. And Ayelet you won’t believe this but in the dream I said to God, “Oh my testimony book, it’s finally going to take off,” and He said, “No, your book of Jewish testimonies,” before I could tell God I didn’t have a book of Jewish testimonies, I mean I’m really smart, I didn’t have a book of Jewish testimonies. I woke up and I wrote this book as quickly as I could, it’s called “They Thought For Themselves,” God told me more Jewish people would come to know Him through this book than anything that I had ever done. And history testifies a half a million of these are in print, circulated throughout Jewish homes throughout the entire former Soviet Union, we are systematically mailing it to Jewish homes. Ayelet, I understand in Jerusalem what is going on with this book?
AYELET: Yeah, we are giving it away and it is good because it’s short stories, so people like to hear, to read short stories
SID: There is one Israeli there that was watching TV and got supernaturally healed, another person, a mega-millionaire, another person, a concert pianist, another Jewish person that was involved in the New Age, another Jewish person that is a scholar, that actually has had debates with Orthodox Rabbis proving Jesus is the Messiah, so this one place though that this book has not saturated, it’s the United States of America and Canada, so what are you going to do about it? Do you need a telegram from God at this set time to favor Zion? You are seeing really, for the first time, Jewish people coming to Messiah, Sabras, I understand, in Israel that’s native born Israeli’s,
AYELET: Yes, we are seeing a lot in the last three or four years in our congregation, Tel Aviv and in the Jerusalem area we have seen Israeli Sabras coming every week to the Lord, it’s exciting.
SID: Did you hear that, every week to the Lord? Now you were at a meeting trying to get more of God and you hear that you are supposed to marry someone, what happened?
AYELET: I was in Brownsville, Pensacola, and my husband came to a prayer house where I was, and when I saw him walking toward the door, I heard a voice saying this is your husband. And I thought, the first thing I thought, I need to check this word.
SID: But he became your husband. What about your dad, I mean he is a medical doctor from Brazil, what happened.
AYELET: He’s not a doctor, he is from Brazil though, and he had a miracle with his heart, he had a heart condition for years, every few years his arteries would be clogged, and Rosh Hashanah, not this one, the one before, a year and a half ago, he had to go to the hospital because his arteries were clogged, so my husband and I went to the hospital, we laid hands on him, we prayed in Yeshua’s name, and two days later after the holiday they put a video camera in his heart and the arteries were completely open. More than they were before a few years.
SID: So what did he do about Yeshua, Jesus being the Messiah?
AYELET: Two weeks later he had a visit from a pastor from Brazil and he prayed with the pastor to accept Yeshua to his heart.
SID: Sounds like God is really taking care of your family, I meet our husband Shawn, at least by way of telephone, and he moves in extraordinary signs and wonders and words of knowledge, tell me one miracle you remember with him?
AYELET: When we were in a Messianic congregation here in America, I think it was two months ago, the pastor said not to talk about the Holy Spirit, just about Israel, and Shawn was preaching and suddenly he said he heard God saying, “right ear, right ear, right ear,” so he had to stop his message and he looked at the pastor and said, “I’m getting a word from the Lord,” and pastor said, “Okay, go for it.” And he said, “Someone here has a problem with their right ear,” and a woman in the first row jumped and said, “that’s me, that’s me.” So we prayed for her and we saw her healed and the end of the meeting everyone came to receive prayer, people were on the floor, people were healed.
SID: You know the Bible says the Jew requires a sign, but here in America a lot of Gentiles Christians require a sign. And one of the things that really excited me about your husband Shawn is he had been to some of the best revivals in the world, cause just like you, just like me, we are hungry for God, and people would come from all over the world to many of these places but you know the sad thing? The cities were not impacted, in other words the cities were not changed, the bars were still bars, the houses of prostitution were still – and this is what her husband Shawn said to me, “That because the church is not with the heart of God at this moment, the anointing is not strong enough to impact the entire city.” And where is the heart of God at this moment? Open your newspaper; it’s with the Jew in Israel. When a church has a heart for the Jew and is praying for the peace of Jerusalem, and then combines it with a great miracle anointing that God has poured out, the entire city is going to have an impact. If I could ask you one thought for a Jewish person that is so intrigued with you right now as to why they should look at Yeshua being the Messiah, what would that one thought be?
AYELET: there is a scripture that says, “If you would search Me with all your heart, you will find Me.” and I believe that is the heart that I had, I was looking for God, I wanted to know the truth, I wanted to know who He really was and He heard that cry. And I think if you are looking for the truth of God, God will show you and when I looked and started to read our Tanach, the Old Covenant, in the scripture where He talks about Messiah, there is no other that can fulfill
SID: Isaiah 53, no other, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And the truth has a name, it is Yeshua, He is the King, not two Messiah’s, one for the Jew and one for the Gentile, one Messiah, one God, we believe in the Shma. Right?
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