Jesus Saves a Jewish Marriage!
"For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives." (Romans 7:2)
New York State, 1965: two young Jewish students, Henry Feinberg and Janet Rothman, fall deeply in love. They were both restlessly seeking for God in their hearts, but without satisfaction. Through their college years together, and for many years afterward, they hoped to attain enlightenment in the philosophies of the New Age Movement. After college, their paths diverged a little as Henry began to train as an airline pilot, while Janet moved to California. Although Henry achieved success and status, he left his prestigious job as co-pilot and flight engineer with United Airlines completely disillusioned and dissatisfied; for ten years afterward he roamed from job to job and country to country, tirelessly in search of truth.
Janet was similarly searching: both were experimenting with psychedelic drugs and adopted Eastern philosophy and mysticism. For a time Henry lived in a New Age spiritual community, while Janet came to believe the New Age philosophy that all religions lead to God. Living at a distance from one another, they kept in touch only by letter and occasional visits. Nevertheless, their love endured and in 1980, to Janet's pure joy, Henry asked her to be his wife.
Soon after marriage, Henry and Janet began to face problems. Their New Age beliefs no longer proved strong enough to bind them together. As Jesus said in the sermon on the mount, their house was built on the sand. Their new marriage ended in a divorce.
Henry was restless. He looked for an escape route in tough physical training for the Hawaii triathlon, but nothing satisfied his craving for truth and for God. In desperation, he cried out to God to make Himself known to him.
A short time later, while jogging, Henry got into conversation with a Christian lady. After some interesting conversation, they agreed to spend a day out; she hoped and prayed that he would believe in the Lord Jesus and be saved. On their day out, as they drove together in the car, she began to tell him of her faith in the Lord Jesus, the Messiah. She prayed in her heart that the Lord would send him other witnesses of the faith. As they pulled into a junkyard to find a part for the car, lo and behold, the junkyard owner was a believer and for twenty minutes bore testimony to his faith in Christ! As they pulled away in the car, Henry simply began to sob. For the first time, he knew that he had heard absolute truth, after years of hearing that truth was only relative.
They continued on their way with the car, and saw a hitch-hiker at the roadside. They picked him up and sure enough, he was a believer in Jesus too! He pulled out his Bible and read it aloud to Henry for about half an hour.
Later, after a restless night, Henry got up in the morning and turned on the radio, only to be confronted with a gospel song. Broken and burdened by the thought of his sins, he came before the Lord Jesus in prayer asking forgiveness. He believed in his heart that the Messiah had died on the cross in his place, taking away all his sin so that Henry could become a new man, righteous before God.
The Bible contains promises of immediate forgiveness for those who repent of their sins, like the scripture which says: "If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9). Other scriptures give a cast-iron guarantee of salvation if we believe that the Lord Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Savior. One such Scripture is: "Truly, truly, I say unto you, he that believes on Me has everlasting life". That is from the gospel of John, chapter 6 verse 47. The instant that a man prays, accepting Jesus as the Messiah, and asking for forgiveness of all his sins, he is totally forgiven and sealed with the Holy Spirit of God. Every believer, upon the moment of conversion, is instantly reborn spiritually and becomes a 'new creation'. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."
As a new man, Henry began living his life in Christ by starting to pray for his 'ex'-wife Janet, with whom he had had no contact for a year and who was living in California, while Henry was in Hawaii. Henry beseeched God that wherever Janet was, He would send to her witnesses of the Gospel of Jesus the Messiah.
That Thanksgiving Day, Henry happened to be visiting friends who had advertised a car for sale in the newspaper. During his visit, a woman called and made an appointment to see the car. As the potential buyer arrived at the home, in a dead-end road in Hawaii, Henry stepped out of the house and, to his amazement, it was Janet! Full of excitement, Henry knew that God had answered his prayer to send to Janet a witness of the truth; little did he know that that witness would be himself! With delight, he told her all about his new found faith in the Messiah of Israel.
Janet was driving back home full of thoughts about what she had just heard. She had noticed that although only one year had passed, Henry looked different and seemed to have an inner peace that he had never had before. Yet, she struggled with some of the claims that Henry had made. The concept of absolute truth, for example, seemed arrogant to her, as it condemns all other religions as false. However, Israel's Savior opened the eyes of this young Jewish lady. Janet realized that far from being spiritually enlightened, she stood a sinner before a holy God. With no other solution and nowhere else to turn, she repented of all her sins and asked the Lord Jesus to come into her heart and to rule in her life. On doing so, she heard in her heart the comforting words of the Lord: 'I will never leave you or forsake you'. She didn't know at the time that these are words spoken by the Lord Jesus and recorded in the New Testament.
Now that Janet was, like Henry, a child of the Living God, her life began to be completely different. She no longer craved drugs and found that gradually her thinking changed as the Lord showed her the truth that she had so long sought after. She knew now that God's creation is not God, as the New Age concept of pantheism would suggest, but rather that God is One God and there is no other beside Him; He is separate from His creation and alone is the Giver of life, the Author of the Scriptures, the only One who can forgive our sins and wash us clean.
After one month, Janet was baptized, declaring to everyone the newness of her life in Messiah. Henry and Janet both wanted to marry again and did so in April 1983. Since then, the Lord has blessed them with three beautiful and talented children. Janet testifies, 'We truly know that without the mercy and grace of our Lord we would still be lost and deceived. He pulled us out of the mire and set our feet on the narrow path that leads to eternal life.' Henry adds, 'Jehovah is mighty to save. It is awesome to know Him through His Son, Jesus, the Messiah for Israel and for all mankind.'
"Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall." (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 7, verses 24-27)
If you would like to write to the Feinbergs and ask them about eternal life in Jesus, you can write to jfeinberg3REMOVE@bellsouth.net . We have inserted the word "REMOVE" in the email address to prevent the email from being picked up by junk-mail engines, so please remove it manually when you email them.
