We have been on quite a journey - me, my wife, my children and even grandchildren. We've been on a spiritual journey similar to the one Yonah went on, being called by HaShem many times, running away from HaShem to many places, and yet ending up doing just what the Creator had planned in the first place. Our journey has gone from being near to Him, to being estranged from Him, to needing Him, and to coming back to Him.

My journey started by being born into a family which was moving towards the assimilation typical of that generation. Oh, they clung onto the cultural trappings of Judaism, but found a way of doing it without G-d. I was the child of first-generation Americans. This is more significant than it sounds because in many cases the first generation of Jewish people born in this country were not only escaping Europe and the pogroms and later Hitler and the holocaust, but they were escaping the idea of being the people who have constantly been discriminated against throughout history.

They were fed up with being the people "chosen" to be hated, to be blamed for all evils on the earth. So they were trying to "Pass." They bought the idea that they could jump into a melting pot and become one with all other Americans. Some changed their names. Most gave their children both English and Hebrew names -- one for use in the Synagogue, and one for use in public. Some secretly continued their Torah-true lifestyles, but many found (or invented) loopholes and reasons why they could ignore G-d's Commandments. Many became totally secularized. Many became social Jews. All started down the path towards the destruction of G-d's chosen people.

That was the life I was born into. And it was a very slippery slope. In one generation many of my peers became atheists, agnostics, or just plain secular humanists. However, many of us were left with a spiritual vacuum we yearned to have filled. In my case, that spiritual vacuum was not filled until I was 40 years old. The years leading up to my 40th birthday, however, cannot be considered insignificant to the final result of my search for spiritual meaning. At 19 years old, I joined the Navy, got married, and became a father for the first time. The "only" problem was that my wife Myra and I were too young, and had drifted away from G-d to such an extent that we had no idea of what marriage meant, nor did we understand G-d's moral boundaries.

So after four years we were divorced - (legally, not according to Jewish law) and went our separate ways, lived our separate and godless lives for 15 years - until G-d used my older daughter's yearning for something to fill that spiritual void to start the whole family on a surprising path back to Him. My older daughter had a friend, and through a series of problems and failures was led to seek G-d in a Baptist Church! Not too far behind, my wife and younger daughter followed. And one Xmas vacation, they contacted me and plans were made for me to visit them where they were living in Florida.

To make a long story slightly shorter, I also became a believer in Jesus, and was baptized in the Baptist church. We soon became remarried. But from the day I started reading the "New Testament" I started questioning this "religion" I found myself in. It said in that "New Testament" that Jesus and his original followers were all Jews! They went to Synagogue on the seventh day. What was going on, and why were we sitting in this definitely non-Jewish place on Sunday?

That was the beginning of a journey that I later understood to be one planned by G-d, complicated by my stubbornness, and destined for some interesting experiences. I don't know why, but apparently HaShem knew that the only way I was going to fully come back to Him was through discovering, and becoming active in, "Messianic Judaism." I will admit that Messianic Judaism is basically Christianity presented with a Judaic "flavor," but becoming known in the Messianic Jewish community was part of the plan. Because there was a spirit of "everyone doing their own thing," it was possible for those of us who were being driven back to Torah, back to G-d's commands, to create newer "versions" of Messianic Judaism which became less and less Christian, less and less falsehood and paganism, and more and more Judaism -- more and more G-d's truth.

At one point a group of people felt the need to separate from the much diluted term of "Messianic Judaism" and find a term which was historically more correct for the Jewish followers of Yeshua/Jesus. That term was "Nazarene Judaism." The creation of this Torah Observant movement which was known as Nazarene (or Netzari) Judaism enabled some to continue to move towards Torah, while others settled into their bizarre amalgamation of pagan Christianity and anti-Rabbinic Judaism. This split was the final step in my journey back home.

I was considered a "Rabbi" because I was a teacher and congregational leader. What I taught was the preeminence of Torah, even when considering the "New Testament" as true. Yet it soon became impossible to consider the Torah as the primary revelation of G-d and at the same time consider the New Testament as "scripture." There were too many mistakes, inconsistencies, pagan ideas and teachings built on a non-existing foundation. It became apparent that, at best, only parts of the "New Testament" were the writings of the followers of Yeshua/Jesus, or an accurate chronicle of his teachings.

Then came the "virgin birth" controversy. Most in the Messianic and Nazarene Judaism camps held onto the basic Christian teachings with a blind eye. It was as though Messianic Judaism, which was nurtured into its modern existence by Evangelical Christian churches, refused to let go, refused to stop nursing from the bosom of pagan Christianity. Their leaders refused to abandon the sustenance which made them leaders, most having come to their position through training in Christian seminaries. The question of the accuracy of the "virgin birth" teaching was a major point of contention. After much research I came to the conclusion, along with many of my contemporaries, that the "virgin birth" teaching was not only untrue, not only pagan in origin, not only added to the "New Testament" at a date later than the writing of the books containing it, but was the "straw that broke the camel's back" in showing that the New Testament could not be trusted as accurate. Of course, the next step was trying to determine how much, if any, of the New Testament could be shown as historically accurate.

I hit dead end after dead end. There are no original documents of the New Testament. There are no documents, whether in Greek, Aramaic, or Hebrew which have not been in the possession of the "Church" for many hundreds of years. There is no archaeological evidence of anything in the New Testament actually happening. There are supposed events in the NT which are proved false by historical evidence. And what evidence was to be found from Christian sources? Their only argument is that it is true because it has "always" been considered true. It is true because they have "faith" that it is true.

The idea of having "faith" in something with no foundation was not possible for me. I had come full circle. I was home. I was left with the Torah and the faith of my ancestors. And the only place to continue learning from where my limited Jewish education had stopped was the Orthodox Jewish community. So my wife and I moved into an Orthodox community. I consulted with many people, including Jews for Judaism head Mark Powers, and was quickly aware of how much I didn't know -- of how little I had learned in Messianic Judaism -- of how far away from the truth of HaShem I had been dragged by the deception of Judaic Style Christianity.

Now I am busy trying to make up for lost time -- trying to learn what I should have been learning for the 15 years I was lost in pagan deception. But HaShem has found me, and I am back on the right path back to Him.