Journeys Home by Marcus Grodi Page B

everlasting end: That
every step, be swift or slow, still to Himself may tend."
    As I set out to do the unthinkable -- to study the claims of the
Catholic Church -- I clung to this prayer, fearful that the enemy
of our souls would deceive and render me useless for the kingdom
of the Christ I had come to know and love.
    I was raised in a Jewish home, one that celebrated many of the
Jewish traditions, at least in our younger years. I remember having
a special sense that the one God was our God and that we were
His people. Yet as we grew and went out on our own, much was left
behind. Eventually my brother, David, became an atheist, and I,
perhaps, an agnostic.
    In the summer of 1975 (we were now in our thirties), I visited
David. For years, David had been searching for truth, for the
meaning of life, and to know if there really was a God. Many times
I had thought to myself:
    What makes you think there is such a thing as truth?! ... that
there is one thing that is truth? And what makes you think you
could find it? Wouldn't it be like looking for a needle in a haystack?
And how would you recognize it?
    But even if there was such a thing
as truth, and you could find it, and you knew when you had it
... and even if the truth meant that there is a God -- then what?
How would knowing that make a difference in your life? I figured
that I am because of what is. If what is means there is a God,
then therefore I am; if what is means there is no God, then therefore
I am. My knowledge or lack of it doesn't determine what is, so
why know?
    In our conversation during this visit, David told me he had come
across an article that said there are Jews -- Jewish people -- alive, on the face of the earth, who believe that Jesus Christ
is the Jewish Messiah -- the Messiah! -- that the rest of us were
still waiting for. I'll never forget the shock that went through
my system at that moment. I thought back to all the years we had
sat down at the Passover table in expectation of the Messiah's
coming, knowing He was the only hope we had. And now David was
telling me that there are people -- Jewish people -- who believe
that He came?
    I said to David, "You mean they believe He was here -- on earth -- already? And nobody knows? The world is not changed. And He
left?"
    Now what? There would be no hope, nothing left. It's insane. And
besides, you can't be Jewish and believe in Christ.
MEETING JEWISH BELIEVERS IN CHRIST
    Within three months of that conversation, I had moved to California
and met some of these Jews who believed in Christ. They didn't
just believe that Jesus Christ was the Jewish Messiah, but that
He was God come to earth! How can anyone even compute that? How
could a man be God? How could you look on God and live?
    One life-changing night, I was together with a group of these
Jewish believers, all Christians -- all Evangelical Protestant
Christians. They told me that God required the shedding of blood
for the forgiveness of sin, and they explained how, under the
Old Testament sacrificial system, individuals would come daily
to offer animal sacrifices for their sins: bulls, goats, lambs.
    If it was a lamb, it had to be a male, one year old, and absolutely
perfect, without blemish or spot. The individual would put his
hand on the head of the lamb, symbolic of the sins passing from
that individual onto the animal. That lamb -- which was innocent
but symbolically had taken upon itself the sin of that person -- was slain, and its blood was shed on the altar as an offering
to God in payment of that person's sin.
    I couldn't understand why God would put an innocent animal to
death for my sin. It began to get through to me, nonetheless,
that sin was no light matter to God. These believers explained
further that those animal sacrifices were temporary, that they
needed to be repeated, and that they could not perfect the one
offering them. Those sacrifices pointed to the One who would one
day come and take upon Himself, not the sin of one person for
a