This Iranian Jew Begged Jesus to Heal His Son

I remember I was a small child and my sweet mom teaching me Shema Yisrael. I went to a Jewish school in Tehran, learning Hebrew, English, Farsi. They talked more about faith and what it is to know who this God is. God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I remember every night praying the Shema and then just openly talking to God. In our family, things were going wrong. My parents were out of sorts, fighting with each other. I had a tremendous earache. And I remember my grandmother telling my dad, you need to bring a lamb, a sheep, and have the rabbi come and sacrifice the lamb. We gathered around and we laid hands on the sheep. The rabbi prayed in Hebrew and always distinctly we remembered that was for our sins. The minute that he slaughtered the lamb, something amazing happened. My earache went away. It was a big prestige thing in Iran for the kids to come to America. And I was fortunate enough that I was able to come here. I went to an American school, just a whole new world. I felt like I could do anything I wanted to do. My parents weren't looking over my shoulder and I didn't have to be accountable to anybody. I still remember that, you know, there was a 10th commandment that it said somewhere in there, do not commit adultery and things like this. But I thought to myself, maybe that's really for the olden people. I'm a software developer by trade in collaboration with some friends. On the side, we start working on the business project. Some of the business contacts that we had were people of faith. I love the strength of their faith and the way they talked about this man, Jesus, is as if he was God himself. And that was really offensive to me. And one thing that challenged me is that they knew my Jewish Bible better than I did. You know, having heard all these debates in my head and friends and obviously reading articles, books, archaeology and so on and so forth about how Moses did this and Jesus did this and Muhammad did this. You know what? I really need to go to the source. I'm going to go read the Jewish Bible. One thing I had realized as I was reading the Torah, it was amazing to me that when the Jewish people went through what they witnessed with God opening the sea and went through and they saw these unusual happenings, that Moses himself says, you were world witnesses. You saw these things. Your children haven't seen them, but you saw them. Just remember this. Yet they forgot about it and for 40 years we just spun around the desert over and over and over. And I thought to myself, is it possible that, you know, last time was 40 years? Maybe this time it's been 2,000 years that we're spinning around the world, chasing our own tails and trying to figure out what's up. And sure enough, as I start reading this passage Isaiah 53 and it starts talking about that, how this man died for our sins and he was bruised and through his stripes we are healed. Talked about how like a lamb he was taken to sacrifice. Like a lamb. Like that same sheep that was brought to our yard. One thing that occurred to me as I talked to the rabbi and the rabbi said, how could God become a human being? And it occurred to me if God of Abraham, Yisrael, who's that powerful God who opened the sea, if he could do that, who am I to say that if he wanted to show up in the form of a human being on earth, who am I to stop him? I kept to myself. You know what? He's the Messiah. He's the Moshiach. He's not a Gentile. He's Jewish. It was the straw that broke the camel's back. That passage. Once I read that passage, it was like, okay, basically it sealed the deal. He's the Messiah. And I believed it. I never wanted to hurt my family. So I stayed silent. Then a short while ago something happened that turned me upside down again. My own son was driving back from his internship program long distance. That night we were waiting for him at home. Nine o'clock is when we were expecting him. He's getting a knock on the door. It's the police. Our local police. Like, okay, he said that your son has been taken. He's been flown to a hospital. Went down. Not knowing what to expect. Because as far as they knew, there was brain injury. What I do remember is praying to God and asking him, God, you have to give him back to us whole. Each hour we saw improvement to the point that by the third or fourth day, God brought this child back to us. What that did reminded me of a story about a young girl, 12-year-old, who the family and friends thought she was dead. And this man who ran a synagogue chased down, found this teacher who was known in the region north of Israel at the time and begged him, come and heal my daughter. And this man went down to this other man's house and raised the little girl back to life. The man whose daughter was healed, who could not shut up anymore. I love my family, but I can't shut up about who this Jesus is anymore. This Jesus healed my son, brought him back to life. He was gracious to watch over my son when I couldn't. And I didn't know. I feel like that man whose daughter was healed. I can't shut up anymore. I have to tell the story. I have to tell the story.