Sid: What happens when you hear the voice of God, and God tells you “Your seventy years of age and God tells you that you can begin writing books?” Would you say that it was pizza or would you say “Yes, Sir?” Well that’s what my guest did Roberta Simpson and let’s find out about her because I’ve got in my hands the most wonderful book it’s called “Nana’s Bible Stories.” It has actually has a CD with it which is narrated by Sheila Walsh and these are not just stories. And these are not just stories, these a stories for your children and your grandchildren that will give them faith in healing and courage and understand that there’s a plan for their life and hope and love and even salvation. Roberta before we even discussed the book I want to get to know a little bit about you and I want our Mishpochah to get to know a little bit about you. Both of your parents were Jewish as the rabbi’s are very disappointed when I saw yes and when they ask me. And you had quite an adventurous life being raised in England during the war years; tell me some of your earliest recollections.
Roberta: Well, actually Sid I remember even the day that war broke out I was only three and I…
Sid: Boy you have a better memory than me at three you remember all of that but that was a pretty historic moment.
Roberta: It was and it was very traumatic and I think that’s why I remembered it and my parents it was my mother’s Birthday and my step parents were having a fight and it was because he had forgotten her Birthday. But you know war was being declared and they were having this argument and I kind of mimicked my father and he gave me a smack and put me in the corner and so that was a very memorial day for me and it just got worse after that.
Sid: Do you remember experiencing anti-Semitism in London in those early years of the war?
Roberta: Not really I think what I experienced then more was fear, and I guess my brother and I would over hear people talking around us. I knew that from an early age it was not good to be Jewish, it was like you know Hitler was going to come and kill us and you know bombs were dropping. There were nights we didn’t sleep we had to go down into the bomb shelters and put on gas masks and it was a very fearful time.
Sid: Tell me how a nice Jewish girl goes to a Pentecostal Church and has an encounter with God? Why would you even go there Roberta?
Roberta: Well, I went through some very difficult times in my life, I was married and had two children, went through a divorce and fortunately married this wonderful man who I’m, we just celebrated our 41st wedding anniversary and we had twins and one had died. And the twin that had lived she was in an incubator for three months in the hospital. One weekend they allowed her to come home because she had just put on some weight they said that when she was 5 pounds she could come home and so she came home one weekend and a friend of my husbands. Now my husband was raised in the Catholic church and the Anglican Church. How we got together is kind of an amazing thing but he really had a love for God and he had a love for Jesus and I didn’t understand everything but I knew that I loved him and he was the first person that came into my life who loved the Jewish people. He would talk about it all the time and he would say, “One of the reasons I love you is because you’re Jewish and that was such a healing and amazing thing for me.” And we had been invited to go to this church by a friend of his and I said “I hated it,” you know it was loud there was this band with drums and I thought “I never knew much about church, but what’s a drum doing on a church platform?”
Sid: We don’t have drums in the synagogue. [Laughing]
Roberta: I know. Then you know the sermon to me was boring, they had a quartet sing and I thought they were pretty awful, but it was at the end of the sermon and pastor said something like he quoted that scripture “Where two or more are gathered in His name He’s in the midst.” And he talked a bit about Jesus is the only one that can really change our lives and bring forgiveness and different things like that, I mean that was long time ago now but something just stirred in my heart and I knew that my ears perked up, my heart opened and I saw Jesus, I mean I saw him with my eyes walking across the church by the altar and…
Sid: I have to ask you Roberta at that time were you into drugs, were you drinking, I mean where does this come from?
Roberta: Well, you know what I didn’t even question anything I just knew that I was seeing the person that I needed in my life. And it was His smile and the love on His face. I was never a drinker, I have never even tasted pizza up to that time, so it was none of those things, this was a real encounter and it changed my life. I knew when I left that afternoon…
Sid: Now, when you saw Him do you think it was like in vision form or did you feel like you really saw Him?
Roberta: No I saw Him, it wasn’t that I’ve had a vision already and it wasn’t that. It was I saw Him, it was like I saw a real person walking across the church.
Sid: Now, when was that, what year?
Roberta: Well, that was forty years ago, early 70’s, okay. Now here’s an interesting thing and I think our Mishpochah will find this interesting. I came to know the Messiah in the early ‘70s; many of the leaders of the Messianic Jewish movement today come to know the Lord in the early ‘70s. And what I believe Roberta is there was a genuine move of God’s Spirit in the early ‘70s on Jewish people. I was involved in starting one of the first Messianic Jewish synagogues, and I have to tell you it was so exciting because every week Jewish people were coming to the Lord and sharing their testimonies. Then as quickly as that move opened that move of God’s Spirit on Jewish people as quickly as it opened it seemed to close. And outside of Russian Jews, and that’s why I spend a great deal of my time working with Russian Jews telling them about the Messiah, see the reason they’re open is they never bought the lie that you can’t be Jewish and believe in Jewish. They’ve haven’t even had a revival there as far as I’m concerned. But I believe that the same thing that happened to you, and the same thing that happened to me is about ready to happen on Jewish people worldwide at this moment. There is another move of God’s Spirit and what happened to Roberta I mean being in a Pentecostal Church, she should have been there, she didn’t like it, there is no way in the world it would have stuck, you could have read Isaiah 53 till you were blue in the face she would have never believed in Jesus. But doesn’t it say in scripture Robert that the Jew requires a sign?
Roberta: Absolutely and I believe that is what happened to me.
Sid: And I have another spin which I don’t know if you ever heard this Roberta, but I believe that the church today is so hungry for signs and wonders and many are starting to get signs and I believe the reason that they are receiving this impartation of gifting for signs and wonders is to reach Jewish people. Most of them don’t even know why they are being equipped right now.
Roberta: Well, yes I believe that that’s part of it as well.
Sid: Well, did you have any problems though with friends and family I mean being Jewish is more than religion, it’s a way of life. Once you saw the reality of Jesus did you question what you believe, did you have second thoughts?
Roberta: You know I didn’t and that’s, looking back that’s kind of amazing but what happened to me I was in a very difficult situation I had two young children and then I had this little premature baby that I had to feed day and night every two and a half hours and you can imagine how difficult that was. And when she came home she was you know I had never held her before because she was so delicate and I just you know I didn’t know anything about the Bible much except maybe a little bit from school here and there. But every time I would get up to move into her room I would see the Lord before me, not the same way as I had seen in the church but just sort of hovering just I knew He was with me, I knew His presence was with me and it just I never looked back, I just never looked back.
Sid: Well, Mispochach we’re going to find out more about how supernaturally at age 70 Roberta was told to author a book and what God is doing with this book and in fact I have a copy of it right in front of me; it’s called “Nana’s Bible Stories.” And the thing that I personally love about it is at a young age you can get children learning concepts about there’s a destiny on your life, there’s hope, there’s healing, there’s courage. I want you to hear my friend Steve Hill who was the main speaker at the Pensacola revival. Let’s go to that; “Steve, you called me on the phone you said you were so excited about this book.” Actually I’m overwhelmed at what quality this is, not just the beauty of the art work and the story and the narration but the Spirit that is on this.
Steve Hill: Sid you cannot get through this book and not find Jesus, Jesus is all the way through it and that’s the purpose of this it’s for these little young lives. I look at young lives as a like a fertile field and we’re sowing seed and this is good seed, it’s an opportunity for us to sow Jesus into the lives of young people.
Sid: What did you do personally with this book?
Steve Hill: Well, I’m sort of helping to introduce Roberta Simpson to the Christian world, I encouraged Roberta early on to take these stories that she’s used and written over the years and compile them together, my children love these stories.
