Testimonies

Natalie's Testimony By Natalie Sachs It seems that America is like my "promised land" since that is where the most dramatic things in my life have taken place... About four years ago, I decided that I wanted to see the world and start out on the great travel adventure. I had not yet finished studying, but at that stage I didn't really care - I was consumed with a desire to be free! I had been studying Fine Arts for 3 years at WITS Tech and was right in the thick of the art world, with all its distorted ideals and influences. My confidence in myself and in mankind as his own saviour and deliverer was my source of strength and hope, and it was with these ideals that I set off. I was totally unaware that this was the beginning of a trip that would turn my world upside down and bring me to a place of conviction and a desire to have God's hand in my life. When I got to America, my well-preserved little "self" bubble popped wide open and I suddenly realised that everything I'd believed in was not true. America was such a mess. There just seemed to be a mass of excess everywhere I looked. Excess TV, excess drugs, excess garbage, excess violence. Very rarely did I meet someone who hadn't been a drug addict, an alcoholic or imprisoned before they'd hit 30. I soon realised that there was no way man would be able to bring himself out of the mess he had created. I realized that the world was heading very quickly into a dark tunnel and I didn't know how to find the exit door. I became very depressed and hopeless as I began to realise that everything I'd believed in was not really true. I needed desperately to find answers to the questions "Who are we? What are we doing? Where are we going?" It seemed that no matter who I asked (whether they were a New Age guru or a hillbilly from the countryside) no-one could give me the answers I was looking for. About 9 months into my travels a friend and I were driving through the country on our way to Colorado. Out of nowhere he said that there was something that he felt he must tell me (he was a Christian). He started to share with me about the book of Revelations (which is the last book of the New Testament and speaks about the end times). I can't explain what went on inside me as he shared with me the prophecies for the human race and God's second coming portrayed in that book. Not only were these the exact answers to the questions I'd been so desperate to understand, but I could see evidence of it in the world. I knew right away that this was the truth and that God was speaking to me and opening my eyes. From that night on, God became real to me again, but the issue of Jesus and who He was began to gnaw at my soul. I knew that He was a special man who had done exceptional things and I knew that He was a part of God. I came back to South Africa with these questions swimming around in my mind, "Can I be Jewish and believe in Jesus? Aren't I turning my back on God and on who He made me to be?" I spent a year finishing my fine art diploma and trying to reconcile myself to what seemed like 2 conflicting ideals floating around in my mind. There were two Christians in my class that year, and they prayed for me, patiently listened to all my confusion, and shared the truth about Jesus and the reality of sin (even though at times I did not like to hear what they were saying!) I finally reached a point where I knew I needed to make a choice. I could not stand in the middle any longer. Either I was for God or against Him, but I knew I could not go on any longer trying to serve 2 masters. This was a very dark time for me as I felt I was letting God down by not choosing Him, and my Jewish guilt and my desire to hold onto what was familiar to me was still strong. I decided to call Jews for Jesus. I had been to one of their Friday night services and I knew that if anyone could help me it would be them. I started having Bible studies with Laura Barron. As Laura shared with me about how Jesus was Jewish and that he had in fact come to the Jews and that the New Testament was written mostly by Jewish people, I realised that actually there was nothing more Jewish than believing in Jesus. Jesus had fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies and had come and died so that I could be free. Laura had helped me to bridge the gap and I knew that Jesus was "the way, the truth and the life." I asked Him to come into my heart and life and to restore me, and that is exactly what he did. From that moment onwards everything inside me changed. My morals and ideas about life - my whole internal world - was washed clean and God was as close as my own soul. Shortly after that I got baptised, which is a symbolic and physical act of cleansing and renewal. I will never forget the feeling of coming out of the water and feeling totally newborn. Everything was lighter and clearer and I knew my life would never be the same again. I have now been walking in a relationship with Jesus for 2 years. It seems that everyday He teaches me something new about himself and draws me ever close to Him. 6 months ago I had the opportunity to go on a summer witnessing campaign with Jews for Jesus on the streets of New York. Although beforehand it seemed like a task that I would never be able to fulfill, I felt like God really worked a miracle in me and gave me the courage to stand for him. I got a glimpse of the world through God's eyes, and sensed something of His love for His people and His sadness at the way people choose to walk in lonely darkness rather than have fellowship with Him. This is an experience that has changed my life and something that I draw from continually as I walk out my life with Jesus. It seems to us that in making a choice to let God into our lives we will lose so much, and yet what we gain is so much greater - eternal life. This is a treasure that cannot be measured in quantity or price and which God has given us freely because of His great love for us. I just thank God for this and that I can know Him personally. I hope that you too will let God into your life as He reaches out to you and touches you. God is a God of love and all He desires is to share that love with you. I would challenge you to let Him into your life, and experience a fullness that nothing else can replace. As a scientist, I always think logically and I reason things out. That was how my whole search for God began. I looked through my telescope at Saturn and said to myself, Isn't there a great God out there? And when I studied relativity, relativistic astrophysics, cosmology and all these beautiful areas of mathematics, they pointed me to the fact that this whole universe is masterfully made, finely-tuned and controlled by the Great Designer. The logical next step was to want to meet this Designer face-to-face. Among astronomers today there is great theistic sentiment, where even if scientists don't say Jesus has made the universe, they are coming to the very distinct conclusion that the universe is not an accident. The "Big Bang" was not a cosmological firecracker. As the physicist Freeman Dyson put it, the universe seemed to be acting in anticipation for the appearance of mankind. So it is on the basis of logic that we can understand that we live in a universe made by a personal God. It's logic from start to finish. When it comes to God, many scientists lean toward assumptions which are philosophically comfortable to them. For example, in the "Big Bang" universe there is an unverifiable assumption called the principle of homogeneity, which asserts that on a large scale there is "no preferred center"--each point is equivalent in every sense to every other point. This, then, is a drastic departure from the cozy framework early cosmologists had worked with in their geocentric universe models. Let me explain: If we go back to the 1500s, before the impact of the work of Copernicus, the worldview of the universe was a geocentric one. The earth was the center and the sun went around the earth as did all the stars, and to many it was a very reassuring ideal to adopt. In 1543 Copernicus' De Revolutionibus was published and we perceived ourselves to be living in a heliocentric world, (although Ptolemy's earth-centered system was still taught at Harvard University in the first years after its founding in 1636). Mankind was dethroned from his central position in the universe. Many astronomers have gone to extremes by saying we are simply a "zero" in this large cosmos. After all, there are 100,000 million stars in our Milky Way galaxy. That can make us feel very lonely and unimportant in the light of all the immensity. Yet a simple study shows the opposite is true. The universe has not always existed. It had a definite beginning. Our early universe expanded at just the critical rate to avoid recollapse. Galaxies and stars then formed, but one must realize that half the stars in the night sky are members of binary or multiple star systems and are therefore unable to support life. (No stable planetary orbits could exist around such star systems.) Of the remaining half there are about 30 parameters which must be met in order for them to support life. With billions and billions of stars, it is improbable that all the conditions which must be met for the existence of life exist elsewhere. I would not be surprised if we were the only intelligent life species in the entire universe. In fact, leading evolutionists, such as Dobzhansky and others have agreed that there has not been enough time for mankind to have assembled spontaneously within the time span of our universe. We've astronomical evidence that demands a verdict. And I've examined this evidence, not from an emotional point of view, but from a logical point of view. We've got historical evidence that Jesus, the Jew, lived and died and rose again from the dead. When Albert Einstein was asked by a reporter if he accepted the historical existence of Jesus, he responded, "Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life. I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene." To the person who is seriously seeking today I would say, read the gospels from an objective point of view, as Albert Einstein did. As Isaac Newton did. Don't let your emotions override or cloud your decision. Seek after truth and don't let anyone make up your mind for you. It is far too important. It does matter what you believe.