“It is time for Israel to accept that Jesus IS THE SON OF GOD AND HE IS THE MESSIAH SENT TO SAVE US.”

My name is Avi Goldstein and that was me on the afternoon of March 27th, 2024.

I stood at the microphone staring at over 8,000 Israelis packed into the Ashkol events hall in Ashdad with another 7,000 watching the live broadcast online across Israel.

As a former Mossad operations officer and lifelong Orthodox Jew, I was expected to fade quietly into retirement and keep my secrets.

Instead, I gripped the microphone and said the words that would destroy my reputation and change Israel forever.

“18 months ago, I died on a street in St. Petersburg, Russia. I met Yeshua face to face. He showed me heaven, hell, and the future of Israel. Today I stand before you to declare that Yeshua of Nazareth is the Messiah we have been waiting for.”

The room exploded.

Some screamed in anger.

Others began weeping.

And then the impossible happened.

From every section of that massive hall. Jewish people started standing up and shouting, “I saw him too. Yeshua appeared to me in a dream.”

What began as a messianic testimony event became the largest public confession of Jewish faith in Yeshua in modern Israeli history.

This is my story of how one Orthodox Jew who hated everything about Jesus came to know him as the living Messiah.

How one supernatural encounter led to a testimony that ignited a movement across Israel.

And how the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is calling his chosen people home.

I’m 42 years old.

I was born in the Maya Sharim neighborhood of Jerusalem, one of the most strictly Orthodox communities in the world.

My father, Kaim Goldstein, was a respected Torah scholar who spent his days studying Talmud in a small yeshiva near our apartment.

My mother, Rivka, Jehan came from a long line of rabbis going back generations.

In our home, every moment of life was governed by halaka, Jewish law.

We woke up with prayers, ate only strictly kosher food prepared according to the most stringent standards, observed Shabbat so carefully that we would not even tear toilet paper on Saturday, and spent our evenings studying sacred texts by candle light.

My father wore a black coat and fur hat even in the summer heat.

My mother covered every strand of her hair with a tyel headscarf.

My four brothers and I attended a chedair religious school where we learned to read Hebrew before we learned to read modern texts and where the secular world was presented as a dangerous threat to our souls.

From my earliest memories, I was taught that being Jewish was not just a religion, but the very core of who I was as a human being.

We were God’s chosen people, set apart, holy, called to obey the Torah and preserve the traditions of our fathers.

Every morning I wrapped to fill in felactories around my arm and forehead binding myself physically to the commandments.

Every evening I recited the shama declaring that the Lord our God is one.

I learned to read the Torah in its original Hebrew, to debate the finer points of Talmudic law and to see the world through the lens of a strict separation between the sacred and the profane, between Jews and Gentiles, between those who kept the law and those who broke it.

My identity was so completely wrapped up in being an Orthodox Jew that I could not imagine existence any other way.

To stop being Orthodox would be like trying to stop breathing.

It was not just what I believed.

It was who I was at the deepest level.

And within that identity was a specific taught hatred for one name above all others.

Yeshua, Jesus.

In our community, that name was never spoken except as a curse or a warning.

From the time I was old enough to understand, I was taught that Jesus was the greatest enemy the Jewish people had ever known.

Not because of what he claimed about himself, but because of what his followers had done to us for 2,000 years.

My teachers told me that Christianity was built on Jewish blood, that the crusaders had slaughtered our ancestors in his name, that the Inquisition had tortured and burned Jews while holding up crosses, or that the pgrams in Europe were carried out by Christians who blamed us for killing their god.

They showed us pictures of Jews being forced to convert or die, of synagogues being burned, of children torn from their parents and baptized against their will.

They explained that Hitler himself had grown up in a Christian society that had prepared the ground for the Holocaust with centuries of theological anti-semitism.

The message was clear and repeated constantly.

Jesus was not just a false messiah.

He was a dangerous lie that had brought more suffering to the Jewish people than perhaps any other force in history.

I was taught specific theological reasons to reject Jesus as well.

He could not be the Messiah because he did not fulfill the prophecies.

The real Messiah when he comes will gather all the Jews back to Israel.

F rebuild the third temple in Jerusalem, bring world peace, and cause all nations to recognize the God of Israel.

Jesus did none of those things.

He was killed by the Romans like a common criminal.

His followers claimed he rose from the dead, but we had no proof of that except the word of people who wanted to start a new religion.

Even worse, Christianity taught that God became a man, which contradicted everything we believed about the absolute oneness and transcendence of Hashem.

The idea that God could be three persons or that he could have a son or that he could take human form was complete idolatry to us, a violation of the first and most important commandment.

To worship Jesus was to worship a man instead of God, which was the worst sin a Jew could commit.

I was taught that Jews who converted to Christianity were traitors, worse than dead, cut off from the people of Israel forever.

We called them Meshumadim, the destroyed ones.

If a Jew became a Christian, the family would sit Shiva and mourn them as if they had died.

Because in our eyes, they had died spiritually and were lost forever.

So when I say I hated Jesus, I need you to understand the depth and specificity of that hatred.

It was not casual prejudice.

It was a carefully constructed world view built on real historical suffering, theological conviction and communal identity that had been passed down through generations.

I hated Jesus because I believed he represented everything that threatened the survival of the Jewish people.

I hated him because I thought his name was a cover for violence against my ancestors.

I hated him because accepting him would mean betraying everything and everyone I loved.

This was not something I questioned.

It was simply true.

As true as the fact that the sun rises in the east.

And yet, despite this strict religious upbringing, I did not stay in May to become a rabbi like my father hoped.

When I was 18 years old, I made a decision that shocked my family and community.

I decided to join the Israel Defense Forces and eventually pursue a career in intelligence.

This required me to get a secular education to interact with non-orthodox Jews and to operate in a world that my father considered spiritually dangerous.

My father was devastated.

He believed I was abandoning the path of Torah study for the empty pursuits of the material world.

We had terrible arguments.

He quoted scriptures at me warning that I was risking my soul.

But I could not shake the conviction that God had put this desire in my heart for a reason.

I believed and still believed even as an Orthodox Jew that protecting the state of Israel was a holy calling.

After 2,000 years of exile and persecution after the Holocaust that destroyed a third of our people, we finally had a homeland again.

We had a nation, an army, a flag.

We could defend ourselves instead of relying on the mercy of Gentiles who had shown us no mercy.

To me, serving in the IDF and later in the MSAD was not a rejection of my faith, but an expression of it.

I was defending God’s chosen people in God’s promised land.

What could be more righteous than that?

So, I left Jerusalem and entered a world that was completely different from anything I had known.

I completed my military service with distinction.

And then I was recruited into the Mossad at age 24.

The Mossad does not advertise or accept applications.

They find you.

A handler approached me after observing my performance in an intelligence unit during my army service and he asked if I would be interested in serving my country in a different way.

I said yes without hesitation and that decision shaped the next 17 years of my life.

The training was brutal, designed to break down every assumption you had about yourself and rebuild you into something harder, sharper, more ruthless.

They taught me to lie so convincingly that I could pass polygraph tests while telling complete fabrications.

They taught me to read people, to find their weaknesses, to manipulate them without them ever knowing.

They taught me to kill efficiently and without hesitation if the mission required it.

But most importantly, they taught me to bury my true identity so deep that I could live for months as someone else entirely.

I became fluent in Russian and Arabic.

I learned to pray like a Muslim when operating in Tehran, bowing toward Mecca five times a day with such convincing devotion that no one suspected I was an Israeli Jew.

I lived double lives and triple lives.

Each one carefully constructed, each one maintained with absolute discipline.

And through it all, I remained orthodox in my heart.

When I returned home between operations, I went back to synagogue.

I kept Shabbat.

I wore my kipa and tits.

My faith was the anchor that kept me sane in a world of deception.

Over the years, I participated in operations across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.

I cannot give you specific details because many of these missions remain classified even now.

But I can tell you that I helped prevent terrorist attacks that would have killed hundreds of Israelis.

I gathered intelligence on nuclear programs that threatened our existence.

I tracked weapon shipments, identified enemy agents, and conducted operations that dismantled networks planning to destroy us.

Every mission reinforced my sense of purpose.

I was protecting the Jewish people.

I was making sure that never again would we be helpless victims.

Never again would we depend on others for our safety.

We had our own strength now, our own intelligence service, our own ability to strike our enemies before they could strike us.

This work became my identity just as much as my orthodox faith.

I was Avi Goldstein, defender of Israel, the servant of the Jewish people.

I was proud of what I did, and I slept well at night, knowing that my hands might be dirty, but my cause was righteous.

By the time I reached my early 40s, I’d become a senior operations officer with significant autonomy and responsibility.

I was no longer the young agent taking orders.

I was planning missions, recruiting assets, and making decisions that affected national security.

My superiors trusted me completely.

I had never failed a mission.

I had never been compromised.

I had never given them reason to doubt my loyalty or competence.

In early February 2024, I was assigned to an operation in Russia that would require deep cover work lasting several months.

The target was a Russian arms dealer named Dmitri Vulkoff, who was selling advanced weapon systems to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Our intelligence indicated that he was about to close a deal for sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles that could shoot down our fighter jets.

If those missiles reached Lebanon or Gaza, Israeli pilots would die, and our ability to defend our airspace would be seriously compromised.

My mission was to infiltrate Volkov’s network, gain his trust, document the weapons deal, and if possible, sabotage it before the transfer could happen.

I entered Russia under a false identity. as Victor Koff, a Ukrainian businessman with connections to the black market.

I had a complete legend built for this identity, including financial records, a business history, references from criminal contacts who were actually Mossad assets, and even a fake family with photographs and background stories I had memorized.

Uh, I spent weeks in Moscow making the right connections, attending the right parties, being seen in the right places.

Slowly, carefully, I worked my way into Vulov’s circle.

I met him at a private club in central Moscow in late February, and I impressed him with my knowledge of weapon systems and my apparent willingness to deal in illegal arms without asking moral questions.

He was cautious at first, as all successful criminals are, but I had played this role many times before.

I knew how to seem trustworthy while remaining slightly dangerous, how to show competence without appearing threatening.

Over several weeks, I became a regular presence in his organization.

By mid-March, I had access to detailed information about the missile deal, including shipment routes, payment methods, and delivery dates, and everything was proceeding perfectly according to plan.

I was feeding intelligence back to Tel Aviv through encrypted channels, and my handlers were pleased with the progress.

We were close to having everything we needed to either intercept the shipment or expose the deal publicly and create enough pressure to shut it down.

Then on March 19th, everything went catastrophically wrong.

I was supposed to meet Vulov at a warehouse in the Franzenski district of St. Petersburg to inspect the missiles before the final payment was made.

This was the critical moment of the operation.

I would photograph the weapons, confirm the details, and transmit the final intelligence that would allow Israel to act.

I arrived at the warehouse at 8:00 in the evening just as the winter sun was setting and the temperature was dropping below freezing.

The building was an old Soviet era industrial facility abandoned except for the criminal activity that happened inside its walls.

Vulkoff was there with six of his men, and the missiles were laid out on wooden crates in the center of the warehouse floor.

I played my role perfectly, examining the weapons, asking technical questions, nodding with satisfaction.

But then, one of Vulkoff’s security men, a former FASB agent named Sergey, pulled him aside and whispered something I could not hear.

I saw Vulov’s expression change instantly from relaxed confidence to cold suspicion.

He looked at me with different eyes, and I knew immediately that my cover was compromised.

I do not know what gave me away.

Perhaps they had run a deeper background check on Victor Klov and found inconsistencies in my legend.

Perhaps one of my contacts had been arrested and given me up under interrogation.

Perhaps it was simply bad luck, a random piece of information that did not fit.

In that world, it does not matter how it happens.

What matters is that once they suspect you, you have seconds to react or you die.

Vulkoff said something in Russian that I will never forget.

He said, “Victor, or whatever your real name is, you have made a terrible mistake coming here.”

His men pulled out weapons.

I reached for the pistol I had concealed under my coat, but I was not fast enough.

Sergey shot me twice in the chest before I could draw.

The impact of the bullets felt like being hit with a sledgehammer.

I fell backward onto the concrete floor and immediately I could not breathe.

There was a massive pressure in my chest and I could taste blood in my mouth.

I heard shouting around me, but the sound seemed to be coming from very far away.

I tried to move, but my body would not respond.

I looked down and saw blood spreading across my shirt, dark and wet, pooling on the floor beneath me.

I had been shot before in training scenarios, wearing protective gear, so I knew what gunshot wounds looked like.

But this was different.

This was real.

I was dying.

I could feel my life draining out of me with each weak beat of my heart.

Vulkoff stood over me and said something about disposing of my body where it would never be found.

Then he and his men walked away, leaving me alone on that warehouse floor.

I lay there in the darkness and the cold, struggling to breathe, feeling my consciousness starting to fade.

My training had prepared me for many things but not for this moment of absolute helplessness.

I thought about my wife Shosana waiting for me at home in Ramadan.

I thought about my two daughters Tamar and Leah who believed their father worked as an import export consultant and had no idea what I really did.

I thought about my mother in Jerusalem still praying for me every Shabbat.

I thought about all the operations I had survived, all the close calls I had walked away from and the bitter irony that after 17 years of dangerous work, I was going to die on a warehouse floor in Russia and no one would ever know what happened to me.

The MSAD would list me as missing in action.

My family would wait for news that would never come.

My body would be dumped in some frozen river or buried in an unmarked grave.

This was the risk every intelligence officer accepted.

But knowing the risk intellectually and experiencing it physically are two completely different things.

As I felt myself dying, I was not brave or peaceful.

I was terrified and angry.

This was not how it was supposed to end.

The pain in my chest was unbearable at first, but then gradually it started to fade.

My vision became darker and narrower, like I was looking through a tunnel that was closing.

I could no longer feel the cold of the concrete beneath me or hear any sounds from the warehouse.

There was only silence and darkness pressing in from all sides.

And then I died.

I know I died because what happened next was not a dream or a hallucination or my brain misfiring in its final moments.

It was more real than anything I had ever experienced in my entire life.

The darkness suddenly gave way to something else.

I felt myself lifting up, separating from my body.

I looked down and saw myself lying on the warehouse floor in a spreading pool of blood.

My eyes open and lifeless, my chest no longer moving.

I saw Volkov’s men returning with plastic sheeting to wrap my corpse.

I saw all of this from above, as if I was floating near the ceiling.

I was dead, but I was still conscious, still aware, still myself.

Then something pulled me away from that warehouse with a force I could not resist.

It was not violent or frightening, but it was absolute.

I moved through what felt like a tunnel of light, traveling at impossible speed, leaving St. Petersburg in the warehouse and my dead body far behind.

The sensation was beyond anything I can properly describe with human language.

I was moving, but not through physical space.

I was being drawn towards something or someone with a magnetic pull that I had no desire to fight.

The light around me grew brighter and brighter until it seemed like I was inside pure brilliance itself.

And yet somehow it did not hurt my eyes.

I could look directly into it.

And then suddenly the movement stopped and I found myself standing in a place that I knew immediately was not earth.

The light had formed now.

And standing in the center of that light was a man.

He was dressed in a simple white robe that seemed to glow with its own radiance.

His face was kind but powerful, gentle but absolutely authoritative.

And the moment I saw him, before he spoke a single word, I knew exactly who he was.

Every cell of my being recognized him.

This was Yeshua.

This was Jesus.

My first reaction was not worship or peace.

It was rage.

Pure burning rage flooded through me.

I had just died.

I was standing in some place between life and death.

And the person waiting for me was the one figure I had been taught my entire life to hate and reject.

It felt like a cosmic betrayal.

I wanted to scream at him.

I wanted to turn and run, though I had no idea where I would run to.

Everything I had been taught, everything I believed, everything that made me who I was as an Orthodox Jew rose up inside me in fierce resistance.

This could not be happening.

This could not be real.

I was Avi Goldstein, descendant of rabbis, student of Torah, defender of Israel.

I had prayed to Hashem every day of my life.

I had kept the commandments, observed the Sabbath, studied the scriptures, and now at the moment of my death, I was face to face with the one name I had been taught was a false messiah, an idol, an enemy of the Jewish people.

Uh, my mind raced through every argument I had ever learned against him.

He did not fulfill the prophecies.

He did not bring peace to the world.

He did not rebuild the temple.

He could not be God because God is one.

And the idea of God becoming a man was blasphemy.

But even as these thoughts rushed through my mind, something else was happening that I could not explain or deny.

The presence emanating from this man was overwhelming.

It was not just light and power, though both of those were there in abundance.

It was love.

Pure, unconditional, overwhelming love that seemed to pierce through every defense I had ever built.

He looked at me and I felt completely known.

Not just my actions or my words, but every thought I had ever had, every secret I had ever kept, every wound I had ever hidden, every sin I had ever committed.

He saw all of it.

The every single piece of who I was, the good and the bad and the ugly.

and he loved me anyway.

Not despite knowing me completely, but while knowing me completely.

That realization broke something inside me.

I had spent my entire life trying to earn worthiness through obedience and service.

I had tried to be righteous enough, Jewish enough, dedicated enough.

But this person looking at me was not measuring my performance.

He was simply loving me with an intensity that made everything else in the universe seem small by comparison.

He spoke and his voice was like nothing I had ever heard.

It was gentle but it carried absolute authority like the sound of many waters like thunder that somehow communicated tenderness.

And he spoke to me in Hebrew, not modern Hebrew but ancient Hebrew, the language of the prophets.

He said, “I ben Kaim. Avi, a son of Cayam.”

He called me by my full Hebrew name, including my father’s name, in the traditional way.

And hearing him say it made me fall to my knees, though I had no physical knees to fall on.

He continued, “Shalom, beloved. Do not be afraid. I am the alf and the tav, the first and the last. I am the one your prophet spoke of, the one your fathers waited for. I am Yeshua Hamashiach, and I have loved you with an everlasting love.”

I tried to speak, but no words would come.

My mind was screaming contradictions.

How could this be true?

How could Jesus be the Jewish Messiah?

Everything I had been taught said this was impossible, but everything I was experiencing said it was true.

The cognitive dissonance was so intense that I felt like my entire understanding of reality was shattering.

Yeshua stepped closer to me and and he held out his hands.

I saw the scars, deep, terrible scars in his wrists where nails had been driven through.

He turned his hand so I could see them clearly.

And then he said something that broke through every theological argument I had ever constructed.

He said, “These scars are for you, Avi. For you and for all Israel. I did not come to destroy the Torah, but to fulfill it. I did not come to create a new religion, but to be the Messiah your scriptures promised. Everything Moses wrote about me, everything the prophets declared, I have fulfilled and I have been waiting for you to see it.”

I looked at those scars and suddenly scriptures I had read a thousand times began flooding my mind.

But now they looked completely different.

Isaiah 53, which I had been taught was about the nation of Israel suffering among the Gentiles, suddenly seemed to be describing this man standing in front of me.

He was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

I had memorized those words as a child, but I had never let myself consider that they might be about a person, about a suffering Messiah who would die for sins.

Psalm 22 came to my mind.

David’s words that I had recited in synagogue.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

They have pierced my hands and my feet.

I had always been taught this was David’s personal lament.

But now looking at Yeshua’s scarred hands, the words seemed like a prophecy about crucifixion written a thousand years before crucifixion was even invented.

Zechariah 12 10 which I had studied in yeshiva.

They will look on me the one they have pierced and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child.

The prophet said the people would look on someone they pierced and that person would somehow also be the Lord himself speaking.

I had never been able to make sense of that verse, but now it seemed crystal clear.

Daniel chapter 9, the prophecy about the Messiah being cut off, killed before the temple was destroyed.

The second temple was destroyed in 70 CE, which meant if Daniel was right, the Messiah had to come and die before that date.

Yeshua died in approximately 30 CE.

The timeline fit perfectly.

Scripture after scripture flooded my consciousness, not because I was trying to remember them, but because it felt like someone was opening my eyes to see what had been there all along.

Yeshua watched me processing all of this.

And he said gently, “The veil has been over the eyes of many of my people, but it was never meant to remain forever. I came first as the suffering servant to bear sin. I will come again as the reigning king to establish peace. Both are true. Both are me. Your people have been waiting for Messiah and I am he. Not the false image that Gentiles created through centuries of persecution and distortion, but the true Jewish Messiah born in Bethlehem, descendant of David, fulfillment of the covenant.”

I finally found my voice and I said the only thing I could think to say.

“But my people, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Inquisition, all the suffering done in your name.”

Yeshua’s expression filled with such deep sorrow that it was almost unbearable to see.

He said, “Those who persecuted my people in my name did not know me and did not represent me. I am a Jew. I lived as a Jew. I died as a Jew. I rose as a Jew. I came to my own people first and I have never stopped loving them. The enemy twisted my name and used it to bring pain, but that was never my heart. My heart has always been and will always be for Israel.”

Tears were streaming down my face now, though I had no physical body to produce tears.

I said, “If you are real, if you truly are Hamashiach, why did you let me spend 42 years hating you? Why did you let me live my whole life not knowing?”

Yeshua smiled and it was the kindest smile I had ever seen.

He said, “I never let you go, Avi. Every time you prayed to Hashem, I heard you. Every time you kept Shabbat, it honored me. Every time you studied Torah, you were studying words that point to me. You were seeking God with all your heart. And now you have found me. Not because you were good enough or smart enough, but because I chose you before the foundation of the world, and now is the appointed time for you to know the truth.”

He reached out and touched my shoulder.

And the moment his hand made contact, something happened inside me that I can only describe as coming fully alive for the first time.

Every empty place in my soul, every question I had carried, every longing I had suppressed suddenly had an answer.

The love I felt was so complete, so total, so overwhelming that I could not stand under the weight of it.

I collapsed completely, and I wept like I had never wept in my entire life.

I do not know how long I stayed there, broken and weeping at his feet.

Time did not seem to work the same way in that place, but eventually Yeshua helped me to stand, and he said, “Come, beloved. I have much to show you.”

He took my hand and instantly we were moving again, traveling through dimensions I cannot explain.

And then we arrived at a place that made the light I had seen before seemed dim by comparison.

We stood at the entrance to heaven itself.

I cannot adequately describe what I saw because human language does not have words for that kind of beauty and glory.

Imagine the most beautiful place you have ever seen on earth.

Multiply it by a million and you are not even close.

There were colors I had never seen before, sounds that were somehow visible, and an atmosphere of joy and worship that permeated everything.

The architecture, if you can call it that, was beyond anything human minds could design. walls that seemed to be made of precious stones, streets that looked like transparent gold, gates of pearl, and rivers of crystalclear water flowing from a throne of indescribable brilliance.

But what captured my attention most were the people.

Thousands upon thousands of people from every nation, tribe, and language, all dressed in white robes, all worshiping with faces full of joy.

And among them, I recognized faces from the scriptures.

I saw Abraham, the father of our faith, laughing with joy.

I saw Moses, the lawgiver, bowing before the throne.

I saw David, the king, playing a harp and singing with a voice of pure worship.

I saw the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, their faces glowing with satisfaction because everything they had prophesied had come true.

And I saw something that shocked me to my core.

I saw Jewish people and Gentile people worshiping together in perfect harmony with no division, no hatred, no separation.

The wall that had stood between us on earth was completely gone here.

We were one family, united in worship of the one true God.

Yeshua watched me taking in the scene and he said, “This is the promise, Avi. This is what awaits all who trust in me, both Jew and Gentile. Your father Abraham saw this day and rejoiced. Your people have always been called to be a light to the nations. And here that calling is fulfilled. In me there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, but all are one.”

I turned to him and said, “But there are so few Jewish people here compared to the Gentiles. Where is the rest of Israel?”

The sadness that crossed his face was profound.

He said, “Many of my people have not yet recognized me. The veil remains, but it will not remain forever. There is coming a day when all Israel will see and believe. Mean when the blindness will be lifted, and my people will mourn and rejoice as they finally understand. But until that day, the invitation stands open. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, whether Jew or Gentile.”

He paused and then said something that made my blood run cold.

“But come, I must show you the other side so you understand what is at stake.”

Immediately the scene changed and we were no longer in that place of light and joy.

The transition was so abrupt and so terrible that I cried out in shock.

We stood at the edge of a place of absolute darkness.

And the moment I saw it, I wanted to run.

Everything in me screamed to get away from this place.

The darkness was not just the absence of light.

It was the presence of something actively evil.

Something that hated and destroyed and tormented.

I could hear sounds coming from that darkness.

Sounds I will never forget as long as I live.

Screaming, wailing, weeping, and nashing of teeth, just like the scriptures described.

But these were not abstract descriptions anymore.

These were real human voices in real agony.

And the sound of it was unbearable.

I covered my ears, but it did not help because the sound was not just physical.

It penetrated into my soul.

I turned to Yeshua and begged him, “Please, I cannot bear this. Do not make me go closer.”

But he said with terrible gentleness, “You must see, Avi. You must understand what you are going back to warn people about. This is the consequence of rejecting me. This is what I died to save people from.”

We moved closer, though everything in me resisted, and I began to see shapes in the darkness. people or what had been people are trapped in isolation and torment.

Each one was alone, completely cut off from God, from love, from hope, from any possibility of redemption or escape.

The worst part was not the fire, though there was fire.

The worst part was the separation, the absolute aloneeness, the knowledge that this would never end.

I saw faces twisted in regret and despair.

And I heard voices crying out things like, “I did not believe it was real. I thought I had more time. I chose my pride over truth. And now it is too late.”

Some of the voices were speaking Hebrew.

Jewish people who had rejected Yeshua, who had died without accepting him as Messiah, and now faced eternity, separated from the God they thought they were serving.

I saw a man who looked like a rabbi, still wearing the remnants of his prayer shaw. he crying out that he had studied Torah his whole life, but missed the one it was pointing to.

I saw another who had been so certain that his good works and his Jewish heritage would save him, but now understood too late that only Yeshua’s sacrifice could atone for sin.

I fell to my knees and wept bitter tears.

I thought about my father, my mother, my brothers, my community in May Shereim.

All of them so devoted, so sincere, so convinced that they were serving God by rejecting Yeshua.

And I realized that if they died without knowing the truth, this is where they would end up.

Not because God hated them or wanted this for them, but because they had refused the only provision he made for forgiveness.

Yeshua knelt beside me in my grief and said, “This is why I came, Avi. This is why I left heaven and took on human flesh and died on a Roman cross. Not because I wanted to start a religion or divide families or cause persecution, but because this is the reality of sin and separation from God, and I loved the world too much to leave them without a way out. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Not because I am exclusive or cruel, but because I am the only one who paid the price for sin. I am the final Passover lamb, the ultimate Yomkipur sacrifice. Everything in the Torah was pointing forward to me.”

I understood then with terrible clarity, all the sacrifices in the temple, all the blood of bulls and goats, all the rituals on the day of atonement, they were never meant to be permanent solutions.

They were pictures, shadows, but I’m pointing forward to the one sacrifice that would actually take away sin forever.

Yeshua was that sacrifice.

The temple was destroyed in 70 CE.

And for 2,000 years, Jews had no way to offer sacrifices for atonement.

But we did not need them anymore because the final sacrifice had already been made.

We just had not recognized it.

I wept for my people and Yeshua wept with me.

After what felt like hours, though time still did not work normally in that place, Yeshua helped me stand and said, “There is one more thing I must show you before you return.”

He took my hand again, and instantly we were looking down at the earth from a great height.

I could see Israel, tiny and surrounded by hostile nations, the land looking beautiful but fragile.

And then I began to see events unfolding before my eyes like a vision or a movie playing at high speed.

I saw the future of Israel and what I saw filled me with both hope and terror.

I saw two possible paths, two different timelines depending on choices that had not yet been made.

In the first timeline, I saw Israel continuing to reject Yeshua as a nation.

I saw deception spreading, false messiahs arising and leading people astray.

I saw wars intensifying, the nations of the world turning against Israel with unprecedented hatred.

I saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, and I saw a time of tribulation so terrible that Yeshua said, “If those days were not cut short, no flesh would survive.”

I saw Jewish people suffering again, hunted and hated.

And I saw many crying out to God, asking why he had abandoned them.

But in the midst of that terrible tribulation, I saw remnant faithful Jewish believers in Yeshua standing strong and pointing others to the truth.

And I saw the moment when the eyes of the nation were finally opened, when Israel as a whole looked on the one they had pierced and recognized him at last.

I saw national mourning and national repentance.

And I saw Yeshua returning to set his feet on the Mount of Olives, just as Zechariah prophesied.

I saw the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah.

And I saw Israel finally stepping into her full calling as a light to the nations.

But then Yeshua showed me the second timeline, the one that could happen if Israel recognized him sooner.

In this version, I saw Jewish people across the nation having dreams and visions just like I was having.

I saw rabbis studying the scriptures and suddenly seeing Yeshua in passages they had read a thousand times.

I saw soldiers and business people and students and grandmothers encountering him personally and being transformed.

I saw a great awakening spreading through Israel.

And I saw the nation turning to her Messiah before the worst of the tribulation had to come.

I saw healing and restoration, reconciliation between Jewish and Arab believers in Yeshua.

And I saw Israel becoming the missionary force to the world that God had always intended.

I saw believers from Israel going out to every nation with the message of Yeshua.

And I saw the fulfillment of the promise that all nations would be blessed through Abraham’s seed.

This timeline still had challenges and opposition.

But it avoided the worst of the judgment that would come through continued rejection.

And I saw something beautiful at the end of this timeline, too.

Yeshua reigning from Jerusalem with his people, Israel in positions of honor.

The promise to the fathers finally completely fulfilled.

Yeshua turned to me and said, “Both of these futures are possible, Avi. Which one comes to pass depends on how my people respond to the truth. This is why you must go back. You must warn Israel. You must tell them that time is short, that I am coming soon, and that they must choose now whom they will serve. Will they continue to reject me and face the consequences? Or will they recognize me and be saved?”

I was overwhelmed by the weight of what he was asking.

I said, “Lord, I am just one man. I’m not a rabbi or a scholar. I’ve been a spy and a soldier. Who will listen to me? And even if they listen, they will hate me. They will call me a traitor. My family will disown me. I will lose everything.”

Yeshua looked at me with eyes full of compassion and said, “Yes, you will lose everything that does not matter, and you will gain everything that does. I never promised that following me would be easy, especially for Jewish people who know the cost. But I promised that I will be with you, that I will give you the words to speak, and that your testimony will accomplish what I send it to accomplish. Many will reject you, but many will believe, and every soul that comes to know me through your witness will be worth more than everything you sacrifice.”

He paused and then said, “I’m sending you back now, Avi. You will return to your body and you will live. Your return will be a sign, a testimony that I am real and that I have the power over death. Tell Israel what you have seen. Tell them that I am the Messiah they have been waiting for, that I love them with an everlasting love and that I am calling them to come home to me before it is too late.”

I wanted to stay there with him despite everything I had seen, the horror of hell and the coming tribulation.

I wanted to remain in his presence forever.

But I knew he was right.

I had to go back.

I had a mission to fulfill, a message to deliver.

I bowed before Yeshua and said, “I will go. I will speak. I do not know how, but I trust you to help me.”

He smiled and placed his hand on my head like a blessing.

And he said, “Go in my power, Avi Benhaim. I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

And then suddenly I was being pulled back and traveling at impossible speed through dimensions in space, hurtling back toward St. Petersburg, back toward the warehouse, back toward my broken body, lying in a pool of blood on a concrete floor.

The transition was violent and jarring, like being slammed back into a prison after experiencing perfect freedom.

And then I felt it. the crushing weight of my physical body, the searing pain in my chest, the desperate need for oxygen.

My lungs suddenly expanded with a huge gasping breath, and my eyes flew open.

I was alive.

I was back.

The warehouse was dark and silent.

Vulkoff and his men were long gone.

My body was wrapped in plastic sheeting, and I was lying in what I realized was the back of a van.

They had moved me, probably planning to drive me somewhere remote to dispose of the body.

Um, but they had not checked carefully enough to make sure I was actually dead.

Or perhaps Yeshua had kept me in a state that appeared dead until the right moment.

I do not know the medical explanation, and I do not care.

All I know is that I had been dead.

I had been in the presence of the living God, and now I was alive again with a mission that would cost me everything and give me everything at the same time.

I lay there in the darkness of that van for several minutes, trying to process what had just happened and what I needed to do next.

The pain in my chest was excruciating.

But when I managed to pull open my blood soaked shirt, I saw something impossible.

The bullet wounds were still there, two dark holes in my chest that should have killed me, but they were not bleeding anymore.

The edges of the wounds looked weeks old rather than hours old, like my body had somehow accelerated through the healing process while I was dead.

I could breathe, though each breath sent sharp pains through my ribs.

I could move, though my muscles felt weak and unsteady.

I was alive when I should have been a corpse, and the reality of the miracle was undeniable.

I forced myself to sit up, fighting waves of dizziness and nausea.

The van was parked and empty.

I could hear traffic sounds outside, which meant we were still somewhere in the city.

I pushed open the back doors of the van and stumbled out into a dark alley behind what looked like an industrial building.

It was night, cold, and I was alone, soaked in my own blood in a foreign country with no identification and no way to contact my handlers without risking exposure.

My training kicked in despite the impossibility of my situation.

First priority was survival and safety.

I needed to get off the street, find shelter, and assess my condition properly.

I stumbled through the alley and found a 24-hour internet cafe three blocks away.

The young man at the counter looked at me with alarm, seeing my bloodstained clothes, but I told him in Russian that I had been mugged and just needed to use a computer for a few minutes.

I paid him with cash I still had in my pocket, and he pointed me to a terminal in the back corner, too afraid or too indifferent to ask more questions.

I logged into a secure encrypted channel that the MSAD maintained for emergency communications and sent a brief message with my identification codes.

“Extraction needed immediately. St. Petersburg, target compromised. My agent status critical.”

Within 10 minutes, I received a response with coordinates for an emergency safe house and instructions to get there without being followed.

I deleted all traces of the communication, left the cafe, and made my way carefully through the city, using every counter surveillance technique I knew to make sure I was not being tracked.

The safe house was a small apartment in a residential neighborhood maintained by a local asset who asked no questions.

I let myself in with the key code I had been given, and once inside, I finally allowed myself to collapse.

I stripped off my ruined clothes and examined my chest under the bathroom light.

The bullet wounds were definitely real.

Two holes just left of my sternum that had somehow stopped bleeding and started healing at an impossible rate.

I should have been dead.

Any doctor would tell you that wounds in that location, that close to the heart, are almost always fatal within minutes.

But I was standing there breathing alive with scars that looked like they were weeks old.

I cleaned the wounds as best as I could, bandaged them with supplies from the emergency medical kit in the apartment, and then I sat on the floor and tried to make sense of everything that had happened.

I had died.

I had met Yeshua.

I had seen heaven and hell.

I’d been shown the future of Israel.

And I had been sent back with a message that would destroy my entire life as I knew it.

For the next 3 days, I stayed in that safe house waiting for extraction.

And during those 3 days, my entire world view continued to shatter and rebuild itself.

I could not stop thinking about what I had seen and heard.

Uh, every time I closed my eyes, I saw Yeshua’s face, heard his voice, felt the overwhelming love that had poured from him.

I thought about the scriptures he had brought to my mind and I found myself pulling up a digital Tanakh on the secure computer in the apartment reading Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12 with completely new eyes.

The words practically jumped off the screen.

How had I read these passages hundreds of times and never seen Yeshua in them?

The veil that had been over my understanding was completely gone now.

And everywhere I looked in the Hebrew scriptures, I saw him.

The Passover lamb, the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness, the suffering servant, the son of David who would reign forever.

The messenger of the covenant, the stone the builders rejected.

It was all there.

It’s a clear thread running through the entire Tanakh, pointing to one person, one Messiah, one salvation.

And his name was Yeshua.

On the fourth day, a MSAD extraction team arrived at the safe house.

They were shocked to see me alive because the intelligence they had received indicated that I had been killed during the operation.

They had intercepted communications from Vulov’s organization mentioning the disposal of an Israeli agent’s body, and they had assumed I was dead.

Seeing me standing there, wounded but alive, confused them completely.

They asked me what happened, how I survived, where I had been for the past 4 days.

I told them the basic facts, that I had been shot, that Vulkoff’s men had left me for dead, that I had somehow survived and made it to the safe house.

But I did not tell them about dying, about meeting Yeshua, about heaven and hell and the visions.

I knew they would think I had suffered brain damage or psychological trauma.

I knew they would pull me from active duty and put me through psychiatric evaluation.

So I kept silent about the most important part and they evacuated me back to Israel through a series of covert routes that took another 2 days.

When I finally arrived back in Tel Aviv, I was taken immediately to a secure medical facility where MSAD doctors examined me thoroughly.

They were baffled by my condition.

The bullet wounds were clearly visible.

The trajectory indicated the bullets had passed through critical areas near my heart and lungs, but somehow I had survived with minimal permanent damage.

They had no medical explanation for it.

One doctor told me privately that I should be dead, that he had seen thousands of gunshot wounds in his career, and mine should have been instantly fatal.

He asked me if I had any explanation for how I survived, and I just shook my head and said I did not know.

After two weeks of medical observation and debriefing, I was cleared to return home to my family in Ramadan.

My wife Shosana wept when she saw me, having been told only that I had been injured during a business trip and was receiving medical treatment.

My daughters, 12-year-old Tamar and 9-year-old Leah, hugged me carefully, afraid of hurting me.

I held them and tried to act normal, but inside I was being torn apart by the knowledge of what I had experienced and what it meant for my future.

I could not continue living as if nothing had changed.

I could not go back to synagogue and pray the prayers I had prayed my whole life, knowing now that the Messiah we were waiting for had already come.

I could not look my Orthodox father in the eye and pretend I still believed what he had taught me.

I could not serve in the Mosad protecting Israel while knowing that the greatest threat to Israel was not Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas, but our own spiritual blindness to Yeshua.

Everything had changed and I knew I could not keep it hidden for long.

I spent the next month in agonizing prayer and study, reading the New Testament for the first time in my life, finding a Messianic Jewish congregation in Natana where I could meet other Jewish believers in Yeshua and trying to figure out what obedience to Yeshua’s command would look like practically.

The believers I met were kind and welcoming, but they were also careful because many of them had experienced severe persecution for their faith.

They baptized me in the Mediterranean Sea one evening at sunset.

And when I came up out of the water, I felt the same overwhelming presence of Yeshua that I had felt when I died.

I knew I was on the right path, no matter how difficult it would be.

6 weeks after returning to Israel, I submitted my resignation to the MSAD.

My superiors were shocked and tried to convince me to reconsider.

They offered me a promotion, a desk job with less danger, more time with my family, but I refused.

I could not explain to them the real reason without sounding insane.

So, I simply told them that my near-death experience had changed my priorities and I needed to step away from operational work.

They were not happy, but they could not force me to stay.

As after 17 years of faithful service, I walked away from the only career I had known as an adult, from the identity I had built, from the purpose that had driven me.

When I told my family the full truth, that I had not just resigned from the Mess, but that I believed Yeshua was the Messiah, the reaction was even worse than I had expected.

My father declared me dead to him, literally sitting Shiva and mourning me as if I had died.

My mother wept and begged me to recant, to see a rabbi, to come back to the faith of our fathers.

My brothers refused to speak to me.

Shashana, my wife, was devastated and confused.

She had grown up secular and was not deeply religious, but even she understood that what I was claiming was an absolute betrayal of our Jewish identity.

She gave me an ultimatum.

Pete, either I would renounce this insanity about Yeshua and return to being the man she married, or she would divorce me and take the girls.

I begged her to listen, to read the prophecies with me, to consider the possibility that I was telling the truth.

But she refused.

Within 3 months, she had filed for divorce.

I lost my wife.

I lost daily access to my daughters.

I lost my extended family.

I lost my community in the Orthodox world.

I lost my career.

I lost my reputation.

Everything Yeshua had warned me about came true exactly as he said it would.

But even in the midst of that terrible loss, I felt his presence with me constantly, strengthening me, comforting me, reminding me that I had not lost anything of eternal value, and that what I had gained was worth infinitely more.

And I began attending the Messianic congregation in Natana regularly.

And the leader there, a former rabbi named Yakov Stern, took me under his wing and began discipling me in the faith.

He taught me how to read the New Testament as a Jewish book, how to see Yeshua in the context of first century Judaism rather than through the lens of Gentile Christianity, and how to articulate my faith to other Jewish people in a way they could understand.

I learned that there was a growing movement of Jewish believers in Yeshua across Israel.

Thousands of us meeting quietly in homes and small congregations facing opposition from both the Orthodox community and the secular government which had laws restricting religious proitizing.

But despite the opposition to the movement was growing because Yeshua was revealing himself to Jewish people in dreams and visions all across the country just as he had revealed himself to me.

Yakov told me stories of rabbis who had encountered Yeshua while studying Torah, of Holocaust survivors who had seen him in dreams, of IDF soldiers who had experienced his presence during combat, of secular Israelis who had supernatural encounters they could not explain or deny.

Every story was unique in its details, but the same in its essence.

Yeshua was moving in Israel, calling his people to recognize him, and nothing could stop what God was doing.

After 6 months of learning and growing in my faith, I felt Yeshua calling me to begin sharing my testimony publicly.

The idea terrified me because I knew what the cost would be.

But I also could not escape the memory of standing before him and hearing him commission me to warn Israel.

I started small sharing my story in Messianic congregations around the country and the response was powerful.

People wept as I described my death and encounter with Yeshua.

Many came forward afterward to say they had experienced similar things.

Word began to spread through the Messianic community that a former Mossad agent was openly sharing about his encounter with Yeshua and invitations started coming from different groups asking me to speak.

I shared my testimony in Jerusalem, in Hifa, in Bayer Shva, in small living rooms, in rented halls, wherever people would listen.

Each time I spoke, I saw the same pattern.

Some people would become angry and walk out, offended by the idea that a Jew could follow Yeshua.

But others would approach me afterward with tears in their eyes, confessing that they too had experienced something supernatural that they had been afraid to talk about.

An older woman in Jerusalem told me that Yeshua had appeared to her three times in dreams, calling her by name, but she had been too frightened to respond because of what it would cost her in her religious community.

A young man in Hifa, a combat soldier, described seeing Yeshua standing next to him during a firefight with Hezbollah on the Lebanese border.

A presence so real and protective that he knew without question who it was.

A university professor in Tel Aviv shared that while reading Isaiah 53 in preparation for a lecture in the words had suddenly come alive to her and she had understood for the first time that the suffering servant was not the nation of Israel but a person and that person was Yeshua.

These testimonies confirmed what Yeshua had shown me in the vision.

He was actively revealing himself to Jewish people across Israel, breaking through centuries of religious tradition and cultural resistance with personal encounters that could not be denied or explained away.

The movement was growing and I was becoming part of something much larger than myself.

But as my visibility increased, so did the opposition.

I began receiving threatening phone calls and messages telling me to stop speaking or face consequences.

Someone vandalized my apartment in Ramat Gan spray painting traitor and Nazi collaborator on my door.

Though I was followed on several occasions by men I recognized as working for Orthodox extremist groups who specialized in harassing Messianic Jews.

One evening after speaking at a congregation in Ashdod, three men attacked me in the parking lot, beating me severely and warning me that next time they would do worse.

I went to the hospital with broken ribs and a concussion, but I refused to stop speaking.

The persecution only confirmed that I was doing what Yeshua had called me to do.

If the enemy was fighting this hard to silence me, it meant the message was having an impact.

Then, in February 2024, almost a year after my return from Russia, Yakov approached me with an idea that seemed both exciting and terrifying.

He said that the Messianic community in Israel had been praying about organizing a large public event where multiple Jewish believers could share their testimonies openly, not hidden in small meetings, but broadcast widely so that the entire nation could hear.

The goal was not to be provocative or confrontational, but simply to let Israelis know that there were thousands of their fellow Jews who believed Yeshua was the Messiah, and to give them an opportunity to hear why.

Yakov wanted me to be one of the main speakers because my story as a former MSAD agent and Orthodox Jew carried weight that could not be easily dismissed.

I spent two weeks praying about whether to participate, knowing that this would cross a line from which there would be no return.

Speaking in small messianic congregations was one thing, but broadcasting my testimony to the entire nation was something else entirely.

It would bring a level of visibility and persecution that I had not yet experienced.

But every time I prayed, I felt Yeshua’s presence confirming that this was what he wanted me to do.

The time for hiding was over.

The time for boldness had come.

We scheduled the event for March 27th, 2024 at the Eshkol Events Hall in Ashdod, a venue that could hold 8,000 people.

We arranged for live streaming online so that people across Israel and around the world could watch.

We promoted it through Messianic networks and social media advertising it as testimonies of Jewish believers.

Why we follow Yeshua.

We knew the event would attract not only curious seekers and supportive believers but also hostile opponents who would come to disrupt or protest.

We hired security and made plans for how to handle disruptions, but ultimately we trusted that Yeshua would protect what he had called us to do.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I prepared my testimony carefully, praying over every word, wanting to communicate clearly and lovingly without compromise.

I knew I would have only about 20 minutes to share everything that had happened to me.

So, I had to choose the most important elements.

I decided to focus on three things.

First, my background as an Orthodox Jew and MSAD agent, so people would understand that I was not someone easily deceived or manipulated.

Second, the detailed account of my death and encounter with Yeshua, so they could hear directly what I had experienced.

And third, the warnings Yeshua had given me about Israel’s future on because that was the message he had specifically sent me back to deliver.

The night before the event, I could not sleep.

I lay awake in my small apartment. now empty and quiet since my family had left.

And I talked to Yeshua like I had learned to do.

I told him I was afraid of what would happen the next day, afraid of the persecution that would certainly intensify, afraid that I would say the wrong words or fail to communicate clearly.

And I felt him speak to my heart, not audibly, but unmistakably, reminding me that he would give me the words I needed, that he would be with me on that stage, and that my job was simply to be faithful and leave the results to him.

I finally fell asleep around 3:00 in the morning and slept deeply for a few hours.

When I woke up on March 27th, I I felt a supernatural peace that made no logical sense given what I was about to do.

I got dressed carefully, putting on a simple button-down shirt and slacks, wanting to look respectable but not formal.

I ate a small breakfast.

Even though I had no appetite, I prayed one more time, committing the day to Yeshua and asking him to use my testimony for his glory and for the salvation of Jewish souls.

Then I drove to Ashdod, my heart pounding, but my resolve firm.

When I arrived at the Eshkol Events Hall around noon, 3 hours before the event was scheduled to start, I was amazed by what I saw.

There were already hundreds of people gathered outside the building, some waiting to get in early, others holding signs protesting the event.

The protesters were mostly Orthodox Jews and some secular Israelis who opposed missionary activity.

Uh their signs said things like “Jews for Jesus are not Jews” and “stop the deception” and “protect Jewish souls.”

But there were also people holding signs of support, Messianic believers who had come to encourage the speakers and show solidarity.

Police were present to keep the two groups separated and prevent violence.

Inside the hall, volunteers were setting up chairs, testing sound equipment, and preparing for the massive crowd that was expected.

Yakov was there directing everything.

And when he saw me, he came over and embraced me.

He said, “Today is historic, Avi. What happens here will ripple across Israel. Are you ready?”

I nodded and said, “As ready as I will ever be. Yeshua will have to do the rest.”

We prayed together along with the other speakers and volunteers, asking for protection, for clear communication, and for hearts to be open to receive the truth.

By 2:00 in the afternoon, the hall was completely full with every seat taken and people standing in the aisles and along the walls.

The atmosphere was electric, charged with expectation and tension.

I looked out at the crowd and saw such a mix of people.

There were Messianic believers who had come to support us.

Curious secular Israelis who wanted to understand what this movement was about.

Skeptical religious Jews who had come to argue and disprove us.

journalists with cameras recording everything and even some people I suspected were sent by orthodox organizations to gather intelligence or cause disruption.

The diversity of the crowd was itself a testimony to how much interest this topic generated in Israeli society.

At exactly 3:00, uh Yakov opened the event with a prayer in Hebrew, asking Hashem to guide the evening and open hearts to truth.

Then the first speaker, a woman named Ruth Schwarz, who had been a rabbi’s daughter before coming to faith in Yeshua, shared her powerful story of how studying the Talmud had led her to questions that only Yeshua could answer.

The crowd listened with wrapped attention, some nodding in agreement, others shaking their heads in disagreement, but everyone engaged.

Two more speakers followed, each with compelling testimonies of encountering Yeshua in supernatural ways. a doctor from Hadasa Hospital who had seen Yeshua during a near-death experience during a terrorist attack. A former ultraorththodox man from Benet Bra who had been studying to be a rabbi when Yeshua appeared to him in a vision while he was reading the book of Daniel.

To each story was unique, but the common thread was undeniable.

Yeshua was revealing himself to Jewish people in Israel in ways that transcended human explanation or manipulation.

Then at 4:30, Yakov introduced me.

He gave a brief background of my credentials as a former Mossad operations officer and lifelong Orthodox Jew, emphasizing that I was not someone prone to delusion or deception.

The crowd grew very quiet as I walked onto the stage.

I stood at the microphone and looked out at 8,000 faces in the hall and knew that thousands more were watching online.

This was the moment Yeshua had prepared me for.

This was why he had sent me back from death.

I took a deep breath, felt his presence settle over me like a mantle, and I began to speak.

I started exactly as I had planned, with the words I spoke at the very beginning of this account.

“My name is Avi Goldstein. I’m 42 years old and until 18 months ago, I was a senior operations officer with the MSAD, Israel’s National Intelligence Agency.”

I went on to describe my background, my orthodox upbringing, my specific and taught hatred for Yeshua, my career serving Israel in the most dangerous places on earth.

I saw people leaning forward interested because this was not the typical profile of someone who follows Jesus.

Then I described the operation in St. Petersburg.

The moment I was shot, the sensation of dying, and the transition into the supernatural realm, the hall was completely silent now except for my voice.

I described meeting Yeshua face to face.

My initial rage and resistance, his overwhelming love, the scars in his hands, and the scriptures that suddenly made perfect sense.

I quoted Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and Zechariah 12:10, showing how the Hebrew scriptures pointed clearly to a suffering Messiah who would die for sins and then reign as king.

I described being shown heaven and seeing Abraham and Moses and David worshiping Yeshua as the fulfillment of all God’s promises.

I described the horror of hell and seeing Jewish people there who had rejected Yeshua, not because God hated them, but because they had refused the only atonement for sin he provided.

Then I shared the vision of Israel’s future, the two possible timelines, depending on whether we recognized Yeshua or continued to reject him.

I spoke with tears running down my face, pleading with my fellow Jews to understand that I was not a traitor trying to destroy our people, but a brother trying to warn them of danger and point them to salvation.

I said, “Yeshua is not the enemy of the Jewish people. He is the Jewish Messiah, born in Bethlehem, descended from David, crucified in Jerusalem, and raised from the dead, just as the prophets foretold. Everything our fathers waited for, he fulfilled in his first coming. Everything we still hope for, he will fulfill in his second coming. But we must recognize him. We must call on his name. We must trust in his atonement rather than trying to earn righteousness through our own efforts. The time is short. He is coming soon. And when he returns, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Yeshua is Lord. The only question is whether we will recognize him willingly now and be saved or reject him stubbornly and face judgment.”

I finished my testimony and stood there in silence, emotionally exhausted, waiting to see how the crowd would respond.

For several long seconds, there was complete silence in that massive hall.

Then suddenly, like a dam breaking, the response came from every direction at once.

Some people erupted in angry shouting, yelling that I was a liar and a deceiver, that I was mentally ill or demonized, that I was betraying the Jewish people and helping our enemies.

But at the same time, from different sections scattered throughout the hall, other people stood up with their hands raised and began shouting their own testimonies.

A woman near the front row cried out, “I saw him, too. Yeshua appeared to me in a dream 3 weeks ago.”

An elderly man in the middle section stood and declared with a strong voice, “I died during a heart attack last year and met Yeshua just like he described. He sent me back to tell my family.”

A young soldier in uniform stood on his chair and shouted, “Yhua spoke to me while I was on guard duty in the Golan Heights. I heard his voice as clearly as I hear my own.”

All across that enormous venue, in what had to be hundreds of instances, Jewish people who had been silently carrying their own encounters with Yeshua felt emboldened by my testimony to speak out publicly for the first time.