Peter is following Yeshua in a Hebrew way! Here's his story.

Peter is following Yeshua in a Hebrew way! Here's his story.

How I Met Yeshua

When at a school’s Christian Association camp, I gave my life during a quiet one-on-one with my leader. (I hated the thought of doing anything like that publicly.)

I know now that I was serious and that the Lord took over my life from then. He never left me, and even when I left Him I am able to point out how His guiding hand was always there and His arms outstretched to welcome me back.

An example of this was no matter how drunk we were, my friends and I would always put on the LP (Long Playing vinyl record for you youngsters) playing our favourite musician; a heavy rock singer. He was definitely not Christian.

Later on when I was in full rebellion I met him at a youth function where I was working and he had come to speak to the kids. I heard he had become a Christian so thought it was good-bye to his great singing. WOW! His singing was not just as powerful as it was before, it had moved up so many notches it blew me away. (God showed me that Christianity was fun.)

Example two, (don’t worry last one) I had to travel by train to get to school in the mornings, and there was a group of students from the Baptist college who travelled on the same train.

I found myself always trying to get on the same coach as they were on because they were fun to be around and were always so happy. (God showed me that His people were loving people.)

During all of this I think something went very wrong with my thinking. I heard all of these testimonies of people who had been saved from all sorts of evil. I read stories such as the Nick Cruz book and how God saved him.

I decided that God only really cared for them, and I decided I was going to become bad enough for God to start noticing me! Hey, this was not a conscious thought, or my mind would have shown me how stupid this all was. Fortunately, God kept His hand on me and prevented me from going too far.

One day I started going to a small Methodist church in the area. All you guys out there will understand why when I say that all the prettiest girls were going there. I did not have a car at the time, which meant that I would have to walk about three kilometres to get there.

The walk was my undoing because one day when I got there I saw a sign that there was a revival meeting on that day. Oh this was my worst nightmare. I was far too tired to walk straight back so I thought that if I crept in and sat in the back all these crazy people would not notice me and leave me alone!

God showed me that he had noticed me, and during the altar call the next thing I knew I was running to the front tears streaming down my face and being very public!!!!!

(Remember I hated the thought of doing this kind of thing in public.) Just as a side line: the Minister got this young lady to pray for me in front, 7 days later I proposed to her and I have now been married to her for 33 years!

How and why Hebrew?

I have always been very sceptical when it comes to Biblical interpretation and there is a good reason for this. I grew up as a liberal white during the South African apartheid era. During this time the Afrikaans church was using the Bible to justify apartheid.

Then the “Name it, frame it, and claim it” people with their prosperity Gospel followed with their interpretations. One of my hobbies is studying the World Wars and once again I see that the Bible has been misinterpreted by Hitler.

I started realising that there were so many people who have interpreted the Bible to suit their own purposes. During the Crusades, even about 2000 years ago a group of men interpreted the Bible in a way to say that they should get the Romans to crucify an innocent person.

So as I spent more and more time learning how to interpret the Bible correctly and honestly I came across a common way people use to get around problems in their particular interpretation.

They will say things like, “I know it says that but in the original language it meant . . . “ I decided I wanted to know for myself what did the actual original say and started by using transliterations.

This all changed when I realised just how much I was missing when I did not know the thought behind the words. I started to see that the original brought out extremely powerful nuances that English is not able to cope with. I was totally sucked in! Since then I have done a number of courses in Hebrew including Hebrew A and Hebrew B at the e-teacher school.

Now, I am learning something else that came as a surprise. I knew that Hebrew would help me understand the Old Testament better, but as I am getting to understand the Hebrew way of thinking I am realising that the New Testament was written in Greek. But the writers were Hebrews, whose thinking patterns were Hebrew and so my Hebrew understanding is helping me appreciate their writing more.

This is what my son did for me on my 50th Birthday. He got me helicopter search and rescue training as you can see in the picture. (I am terrified of heights!!!!!)