SID: Hello, Sid Roth here with Rabbi Kirt Schneider, and the prophet Joel, it’s just like it was written today, says that in the last days we are going to receive supernatural visions, supernatural dreams, in which God is going to literally direct our activities. I have Rabbi Kirt Schneider, Kirt the last thing in the world you ever thought you would be was a Messianic Jewish Rabbi, I’m sure.
RABBI: Ain’t that the truth.
SID: I mean your big goal in life is to be the top wrestler in your high school, tell me about that.
RABBI: Well, I thought if I could become the state champ at the weight class that I wrestled at growing up, that was symbolic to me, Sid, of conquering the world. And I envisioned that I was going to become state champ, the referee was going to raise my hand, chills were going to go through my body, and then for the rest of my life I was going to sit in the lounge chair on the beach and enjoy the sunshine and bask in the glory, I was not prepared for life after wrestling and I came to a rude awakening when I stepped off that wrestling mat after wrestling my last wrestling match in high school.
SID: I assume you lost.
RABBI: You know, I don’t, well I would have had a loss because I would have been in the state tournament, so yeah that is true, I got to the place in my own mind I kind of achieved my goal in the sense that I was wrestling at level where I thought there was nobody that I couldn’t beat, but I never did achieve the goal of becoming state champ, although I did get a small scholarship to college. But the thing was that wrestling to me, my world was made up of people that wrestled my weight class, and I didn’t think beyond that, and obviously life is much bigger than people that wrestle at 119 pounds in high school.
SID: Okay, so you’re frustrated and you do what I did, I come from a traditional Jewish background, and I figured that money would bring me happiness. Personally I got into the new age; you started reading books about gurus, and one night, what happened to you?
RABBI: At the age of twenty years old in 1978, as I slept in my bedroom Sid, in Pepperpike, Ohio, an eastern suburb of Cleveland, at 3:30 in the morning the Lord awoke me from my sleep, now let me day that no one had ever talked to me about Jesus, I was bar mitzvahed in a conservative home.
SID: Wait a second; you are in Christian America, what do you mean no one ever talked to you about Jesus?
RABBI: All my friends were Jewish, I only had one friend, I only had one friend growing up that wasn’t Jewish, and he happened to wear a big cross around his neck, but not because he was a Christian, he was the toughest Italian in high school, and I used to follow him around just to watch him beat people up, so no one told me about Jesus.
SID: Okay, so you had no center of, no frame of reference whatsoever.
RABBI: Zero, and this night at twenty years old, I was lost in life, wrestling had ended, I lacked identity, I lacked purpose, I was reading a book at the time as you said about a guru from India that didn’t, in the book there were pictures of him levitating off the ground. I said, “God if this is real,” I said, “I want to be able to do this,” and it was during that time of seeking at the age of twenty that the Lord awoke me, 3:30 in the morning, and suddenly with my eyes closed Sid, I was aware that something was happening, it was as if I was being supernaturally transported into another dimension, it lasted no more than three seconds, Jesus appeared on the cross in this vision at night, it was in color, I could see the terrain that the cross was staked in, there were people in the distance that looked on, at him, even later as I read about in the New Testament that they looked on from a distance, and then a ray of red light beamed down on his head, and when I saw Sid, the ray of red light from straight through the sky, beam down on Yeshua’s head, I knew it was coming from God, because the beam was coming from straight above, and that God was telling me that he was connected to Jesus, it lasted like I said, no more than three seconds, but I knew that God had revealed himself to me, I got out of my bed, looked at my clock radio like I said, it was 3:30 in the morning, and that was the beginning for me of seeking after Yeshua, Jesus.
SID: So what does someone that doesn’t know any Christian, now believes that Jesus is real, obviously by this experience, in fact it was almost as if you saw him being crucified.
RABBI: Yeah, that’s exactly what I saw,
SID: I mean the actual event.
RABBI: I believe it, I tend to believe that what I saw was that God supernaturally transported me back in time 2000 years to literally see the site of the crucifixion.
SID: So I guess you told your parents the good news, what did they say?
RABBI: Well, they didn’t say much at first, because they thought it was just a dream and it would be over in a few days.
SID: Now were they very religious Jews?
RABBI: No, not at all, but they were very much Jewish, you know very much, my Dad said I’m a Jew from the top of my head to the bottom of my feet, I mean very, very strong in their Jewish identity, culture, social relationships, network etc, so they didn’t react much at first because they thought I would stop talking about it in a day, but when they saw that I was serious, and I didn’t stop talking about it,
SID: It’s a fad; he’ll outgrow it.
RABBI: Exactly, so they eventually you know, became very upset, very humiliated, their Jewish son walking around their Jewish neighborhood talking about Jesus, and they hired the most famous deprogrammer in the country to come from California, they flew him in from California
SID: Did they trick you?
RABBI: They did trick me.
SID: Really, how did they do that?
RABBI: Well my dad told me we were going to go talk to somebody about purchasing a restaurant, and so I thought we were going to be in business together, well he had some business, but it wasn’t for me to be in the restaurant business with him, and basically we walked into a hotel room and the door shut behind me, and the deprogrammer said, he was there with two guys that were you know kind of his body guards, and he said we are going to talk about cults, and from that point on I couldn’t leave, I mean I physically had one of them
SID: Did you ask to leave?
RABBI: Yes I did, I said I’m not programmed, and he said well you’ve got nothing to worry about. I stood up and said well can I leave, and one of his bodyguards said sit down. So they took me to California for a couple of weeks their idea was if we can get him away from whoever is programming him then he’ll snap out of it. I really, I felt bad for my parents actually, they spent so much money, it cost them thousands and thousands of dollars, I felt bad for them that they wasted so much money.
SID: Now wait a second, you just had this vision out of the blue, had you started reading the Bible?
RABBI: No, I knew nothing about Jesus, I had never, I mean no, it was, Jesus was a non issue for me, I mean I never thought about him, never talked about him one way or another.
SID: That is amazing, so this deprogramming, it doesn’t sound like it worked.
RABBI: It didn’t you know what, it was a shame, because they didn’t even do anything, once the initial session was over they took me to California to their rehabilitation house, which was just again, to get me away from whatever they thought was programming me, they took me to the beach at day and the bars at might, and that was it.
SID: Yes, then how come you ended up in a mental institution?
RABBI: Because when that didn’t work, they figured we got to do something, so they hired a Jewish psychiatrist from Cleveland, with the agenda up front before even having met me I believe, of having me probated to the mental ward, so they could do whatever to snap me out of this thing, and one day I came home and they said you know, we’ve got somebody coming over and this Jewish psychiatrist comes over and we sit down, and I begin to tell him about Jesus and what would have happened to me if it wasn’t for Jesus and I literally, you know, was impressed with myself that I had such a strong witness I felt,
SID: I’m impressed!
RABBI: This Jewish psychiatrist, but he just sat there and listened and he was just waiting to bait me, you know, so that I would tell him I had a vision of Jesus, and then what he did, he went to the courts and said this guy is delusional, we need to get this guy where we can help him, and so I came home a few days after that and there was some suitcases that were sitting at the door, and I walked in and my parents said, listen, you know, we’ve probated you to the mental, you know to the mental institution.
SID: This was a legal thing; you could not say I’m sorry; I’m not going on this trip.
RABBI: In two months they give you a hearing, and so they released me than after two months. It wasn’t actually a mental ward; it was the psychiatry wing of a hospital.
SID: Sounds the same to me, but I’ll tell you something, this must have been quite an impression on Kirt, from no framework at all to literally being eyewitness of Jesus dying for him. Well let me tell you something, God is using this young man in a way that is going to so benefit you, in a way that you will understand your dreams clearer than you ever have before, be right back after this word.