SID: Welcome to my world where it is naturally supernatural. My guest, Lonnie Lane, four generations of Jewish people that believe Jesus is the Messiah. Lonnie, tell me a little bit about your Jewish background, I understand you come from a long line of scribes.
LONNIE: Oh, my father’s family are Levites, he told me his Orthodox great-grandfather told him that, and his Orthodox great-grandfather, they were all rabbi’s, said that all the way back they have always known they were part of the Levite tribe, and when I learned that I looked at all the cousins and the uncles and everybody was either a teacher or a writer or scribe in some way, I thought that was fascinating they seemed to maintain
through the generations.
SID: Now your parents were more modern, but your grandparents were Orthodox.
LONNIE: My grandmother in particular, we had every Sabbath at her house, and as my mother grew up with Sabbath, and then they got married and all the kids came so we just all kept going to Grandmom’s house on Sabbath and for all the holidays.
SID: And you did what every young woman wants to do, you grow up, you get married, you have children, and one day your young son comes home crying, why?
LONNIE: He was, this was kindergarten, one of his first days in kindergarten and he got called a “Christ-killer.” And he came home crying and said Mom, I don’t even know what a Christ is, and I never killed anybody, so when I realized that my son was going to have to deal with those kinds of issues in the world, I thought he better know who he is as a Jew, and so that’s when we decided to join a synagogue, and so we began to really
be active in synagogue.
SID: So at that point who was God to you?
LONNIE: I’m not sure how much I actually thought about God.
SID: But you joined the synagogue.
LONNIE: We joined the synagogue because it was all about Jewishness, and being Jewish and cultural identity, but what I found is that while I was involved in synagogue, I started to miss God, where was God, this was kind of a surprising thing to me but I
SID: Where did this come from?
LONNIE: I really, I think it must have been God prodding me, I think that if you know, you want to know things, how many Jewish people are looking for God in all kinds of different places, but it’s God drawing them to Himself, I believe, but I would read the King David talked to God and he seemed to hear from God, prophets seemed to hear from God, so I went to my rabbi and said how come we don’t hear from God anymore, do you hear from God? He didn’t hear from God and he grew up in an Orthodox environment, I didn’t know anybody who heard from God. I was involved in secretary of religious committee, and things like that, and we would talk about the program for the kids but nobody ever talked about God, and I mentioned that do you think maybe we should wonder about and teach our kids about God, and nobody responded to that, and I would go to Shabbat and we would sing the songs but they were kind of empty and, why doesn’t God talk to us, I just had this desire to hear from God and so I discussed it with my rabbi who was also one of my closest friends, and he thought I was a little mashuga, he thought I really needed, that’s crazy and he thought I really needed to see a shrink because I had this inordinate need to hear from God.
SID: So anyway, you do go to Israel with the synagogue group, your first time to Israel, what was it like?
LONNIE: It was wonderful, I felt like I was home, I felt for the first time, I felt, I just felt a peace being in Israel that I had not felt before. But the strange thing, it’s probably the strangest part of it is that I just felt the presence of Jesus in Israel.
SID: Wait a second now, Jesus?
LONNIE: I couldn’t even tell you
SID: Your son is giving you conniptions because he is having anti-Semitism over Jesus, right?
LONNIE: Well he was, it is as perplexing to me as it is to you, I kept feeling like He was, if I turned around He would be there but He was always ducking behind a corner or something, I thought this is just the strangest thing, I just felt His presence and I remember going into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Via Delarosa and having this feeling
SID: This is where supposedly Jesus was walking etc, in the exact place
LONNIE: Towards Calvary, and I only knew minimal facts about Him really, I just knew I had this sense of this feeling and I didn’t know what it was, many years later I realized it was the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I just felt His presence, and I just kept thinking about Him, and thinking about, wondering who is this man? I mean Jews write down what every rabbi had to say forever, you know, for generations, but nobody wants to touch what He had to say, even thought they say, well He was a Rabbi, so I thought what is this power that He has and why does so much of the world believe in this Jewish rabbi that we Jewish people don’t want to hear from, I, it was confusing, and so I found myself thinking about Him a lot.
SID: so you feel like you are supposed to get another job, you go there and you start a
conversation with a woman at this job?
LONNIE: Well, I met the first person who was really a born again believer to use that expression which I explained to you later and she started talking to me about Jesus in a way that was really very interesting to me, she would tell me all her experiences and one day she brought a book to me that answered a tremendous amount of questions that I had had, and I said how did you happen to pick out this book, you go in a book store and there is 6,000 books in a bookstore, and she said well Jesus told me to get you this one, and I said He talks to you? Jesus told you this? I said that’s when I said could we do lunch, and so I started asking her questions, what do you mean, He talks to you, well she explained to me that when, that it’s our sins that separate us from God, well I was a nice Jewish girl, so I didn’t really think I had any sins anyway, but as she explained to me, there are sins that separate us from God and when we are separated from Him, that’s what the Bible says, we can’t hear from Him. But when you have the experience of really coming to Him and opening up your heart to Him, and acknowledging the fact that there are things in your life that you need God for, you do come to a place of repentance of understanding that you are a sinner at some point, I didn’t understand that then, I understood it later, but God quietly comes inside of you, and He, you are not separated from Him anymore.
SID: Yes, but that wasn’t quite your time, however something amazing happens to Lonnie, don’t go away, we’ll be right back.
