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Interview - Stan Telchin
Stan Telchin: By the time I was 50 I had it made. Every dream that my mother-in-law ever had for me was fulfilled! Her daughter Ethel and I had a great marriage. We had two great daughters—Judy, 21, and Ann, 17. We lived in a 6,000-square-foot house and owned four BMW’s. We had full time help and a huge swimming pool. I had an international reputation in my business, had received the Man of the Year Award from one Jewish organization, was on the board of two other organizations and was a trustee of another. All I had to do was to keep on keeping on. I didn’t think it could get any better. Even my golf game had improved!
Then six months later, I thought I was going to die. That’s when Judy called one night to tell me that she believed Jesus to be the Messiah. I was stunned. I felt betrayed. How could my first born betray her mother and me—as well as all of our ancestors—this way? I kept telling her, “You can’t believe in Jesus. You are Jewish! And Jews don’t believe in Jesus!” But no matter what I said to her, I couldn’t get her to change her mind. She was convinced that Jesus was our Messiah.
I had two choices. I could either disown her or I could win her back. I decided to win her back. How? By reading what she read and proving to her that she was wrong. Jesus might be the Messiah for the Gentiles, but not for us.
Over the next few months, as I read the New Covenant for the first time in my life and dug into the Hebrew Scriptures, I came up with five critical questions. If the answer to any one of them was “no,” I was finished. But if they were all “yes,” I had a problem. Here are the questions: “Do I believe in God?” “Do I believe that our Hebrew Bible is God’s divinely inspired word to us or merely the story of our people?” “Does our Bible prophesy about a Messiah who is to come?” “Has anyone ever lived who fulfilled those prophesies?” “Does his name begin with ‘J’?” What I learned from reading the Bible helped me say “yes” to each of these questions, and I confessed Jesus to be Lord of my life on July 3, 1975.
Five years later, after training, I planted the Living Word Fellowship in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and for the nest fourteen years served as its pastor. The congregation was made up of Jews and Gentiles—people from every race and way of life. We didn’t concentrate on what used to divide us but on the One who unites us. For almost two years we met in a Seventh-day Adventist church on Sunday mornings and evenings and on Wednesday nights. Since I am Jewish, the church had a definite Jewish flavor. I taught about all of the Jewish holidays and we had an annual Passover Seder that was open to guests. It was a wonderful experience.