Sid: What happens to a Jewish atheist who's
transported to the heavenlies, then finds out God and the Bible, they're real. Next on this edition of “It's Supernatural!”
[music] Centuries have come and gone offering wisdom
and understanding throughout the ages. Today there should be nothing beyond one's
power to discover. And yet the strange, unusual and mysterious
world of the supernatural defies understanding. Stay tuned for a unique and powerful investigation
into a curious undiscovered universe only on “It's Supernatural!” Sid: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter,
and I'm here with Gary and Shirley Kivelowitz. What happens when you're 24 years old, and
you've “arrived”? Gary, what was your life like, at 24? Gary: Well at 24, I was a court stenographer. We were living in Wilmington, Delaware and
we had - I had really reached, at that point, the pinnacle of my career. I was - we were living in a very nice large
house in the suburbs. At 24 years old, I had more money in the bank
than I owed on the mortgage. We bought cars with the extra cash in our
checkbook, and went on vacations, bought designer furniture. But what I was looking for in life was just
to be happy, and it was all empty. Sid: Why was it empty? Gary: Well it was just working harder and
making more money, and life had no purpose. It was empty. Sid: Not only is it empty, you get a “bombshell”. Tell me about “the bombshell”. Gary: Well it was right at that point when
Shirley had come into a relationship with Jesus. And being Jewish, being raised in a kosher
home, being raised in the temple, the word - the name Jesus - was such a negative to
me. Sid: But wait a second. When you married Shirley, you knew she wasn't
Jewish. Gary: Well when we got married, Shirley converted
to Judaism. Sid: Shirley, why did you convert to Judaism? Shirley: Well Sid, the reason I converted
was because I knew that if I did convert to Judaism, that would satisfy his family, and
there wouldn't be a break in their relationship with their son. I knew in my family that wasn't going to happen. So my goal, really Sid, was that our children
be the same, that they would know what religion they were, and I believed it. Sid: But you changed it now. Shirley: Well no, I really didn’t, because
you see, I believed there was one God. I believed that He was “the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob”, but I didn't have a personal relationship with Jesus at that time; I didn't
even know that was possible. But - so really, I wasn't giving up anything. I didn't have a personal relationship with
Jesus. Sid: Okay. Why did you switch back? Shirley: Well I don't even think I really
switched back. What I really did was I came to understand
that that “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” was, in fact, the Messiah that was promised. And when I came into a personal relationship
with Him, I - it was - I realized that He wanted to not only for us to know that He
existed, but to know that we could relate to Him; that He wanted to have a two-way relationship
with us. Sid: So Gary, did you try to talk her out
of this “meshuga”? Gary: Well it was very difficult. She - before that point, Shirley was a very
afraid lady, very scared of her own shadow, and now her life was coming together; she
was becoming self-assured. Her life, by any standard, was getting better. And it was very hard for me because, number
one, I was jealous, because I wasn't able to do this for her. And number two, she was talking about this
Jesus; that was just such a negative in my life. And so what happened was at that point, I
was also very disillusioned with my profession. It wasn't bringing me any fulfillment. And when I grew up, everybody talked about
“the American dream”, that that would bring you happiness, and I believed that. And here I was at 24 years old and I had “the
American dream”, and it didn't bring me any happiness; certainly a lot of material
things, but no happiness. And so one day I just said, “You know what? I don't want to think this way anymore”,
and I just started drinking. Sid: Were you an alcoholic before that point? Gary: I would never even - I wasn't even a
casual drinker before then. And then, all of a sudden, I became a very
severe alcoholic very quickly. I was the kind of alcoholic that if I didn't
have alcohol in me, I would pass out. But as long as I kept drinking alcohol, I
could still function in the courtroom, I could drive a car, and was in that state for seven
years. At the end of seven years, I realized that
I couldn't stop drinking, and I was too proud to get help. And at that point I started doing drugs, and
continued the alcohol. Sid: The combination of drugs and alcohol
is pretty dangerous. Gary: Yes, yes, yes. Looking back on it, it was very dangerous. But we're talking about now, 22 years ago,
at that point I was probably doing maybe five to $700 worth of drugs a week and still drinking
incredible amounts of alcohol. Sid: Did that help? Gary: No. It just made things worse; it made the depression
worse. And I realized, again, that I was too proud
to get help. I was working in the criminal justice system
as a court stenographer; and I looked at the system, and I looked at the future of children
with alcohol and drug-abusing fathers, and I knew that my children had a really bad future. And during those years of drinking and the
drugs, I squandered literally all of our money. The only thing I had left was a really good
life insurance policy. Sid: Did it really bother you when you would,
say, look at your children, recognizing you were robbing them of any future they might
have had? Gary: Oh I went into severe depression. I drank more; I did more drugs; it was a vicious
cycle. And I loved my children, I loved my wife,
and I could do nothing. Gary: But Shirley, why couldn't you help him? You must have seen what was going on. Shirley: It was a very difficult time for
me, because I was in an awkward position, because I had a relationship with the Lord,
and now 95 percent of my - what was my life, my husband didn't want to hear about. And I did try to talk with him about the drinking
at one point, and he just got very angry. And so I decided that the only thing left
to do was just to pray. Sid: Now when you would talk to him about
Jesus, how did he react? Shirley: Not well; not well. And I remember one morning he was shaving,
and our five-year-old Stephen came into the bathroom, very innocently, and he started
saying, "Daddy, when I die, I'm going to be in Heaven. Are you going to be there, too?" And at that point I just thought, “I’d
better back out”, so I backed out of the room, and I just prayed. Sid: How did you react to that? Gary: Well I remember telling Shirley, "If
you ever bring Jesus up again, we're getting divorced. This just can't work." And I didn't want to hear that name mentioned
in my household. That's how. Sid: Why? Gary: Well growing up in Brooklyn, I remember
getting beat up because our - because us Jews, “we killed their God”, and that's the
atmosphere I grew up in. And I grew up in a household where my uncles
were liberated from the death camps in World War II, and they showed me pictures of people
being tortured alive, and they said, “This is what people - this is what Christians do
to Jews.” Sid: Hold that thought. We'll be back in just a moment, because such
a miracle happened to Gary. I mean, it's really supernatural. Be back in just a moment. Hello YouTube mishpochah! Mishpochah is a Hebrew word; it means family. This is Sid Roth. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally
supernatural! If you’ve been blessed by this show, please
subscribe. Then click the bell so you won’t miss a
single episode of It’s Supernatural! Sid: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter with
Gary and Shirley Kivelowitz. And what would happen, you're Jewish, and
your wife converts to Judaism for the sake of the family; and then all of a sudden, she
falls in love with another man, “Jesus the Messiah”, she says. And so Gary, in the meantime, is at the top
of his career. They have all the money, all the nice things,
but there's an emptiness. It just - he's angry; he’s angry at his
wife believing in this Jesus, because of all the Anti-Semitism that occurred to Jewish
people. He's angry because he's jealous his wife has
some peace. He starts drinking; never drank before. He becomes dependent on alcohol, then he goes
into a drug addiction. He's really despairing; things were getting
- how bad? The worst day of your life; tell me about
it. Gary: Well it was so bad, I just didn't want
to think any more. I remember - this is going to sound really
terrible - but I remember just even buying Sterno and straining it, and drinking it. It was - I wanted to kill myself and -
Sid: What would have happened to you, as far as you thought, if you had succeeded? If you had died, where do you think you would
have gone? Gary: I believed that life - that when you
were dead, there was no hereafter; nothing after life. Sid: You cease to exist. Gary: Correct. That's what I believed, and I was looking
forward to that. Sid: Why? Life too hard? Gary: Well it was just too depressing, and
there was way out. I couldn't - you know, I didn't believe in
the Bible, and I didn't believe in Heaven, but I believed in Hell, because I had that
here on this earth. Life was the worst it could be. Sid: But weren't you a little concerned about
leaving your little children? Gary: Well I thought it would be better for
them because they would be rid of this alcoholic, drug-abusing father. Shirley would be rid of this husband who was
drinking and a bad father. And the only asset we had left - since I had
squandered all of our financial assets - the only thing we had left was a very good life
insurance policy. And so I got in the car one day, and was up
in the northeast; I was in New Jersey. I was driving on the New Jersey Turnpike going
65 miles an hour. I put the car in cruise control, and I was
headed for a concrete abutment, and I was happy to do that. And keep in mind, I didn't believe in the
supernatural; I didn't believe in the hereafter; I didn't believe in the Bible. I thought God was a figment of people's imagination. And as I went off the road -
Sid: Excuse me, did you realize he was that desperate, Shirley? Shirley: I realized that he was very depressed
and in a bad way, but I didn't realize how bad it had gotten for him. Sid: So you headed towards this embankment. Gary: Concrete abutment dividing the highway;
it’s where the highway divides. And at that point - it was Exit 9 on the Jersey
Turnpike; three lanes go to the left for cars, and three lanes to the right for trucks, and
in the middle is this big concrete abutment. And the car was headed for it, and literally
seconds before it hit that, I got lifted out of the car into the presence of -
Sid: Wait a second. Who lifted you? Gary: I can't even explain it, Sid, except
that I was no longer driving the car; I was no longer in the car. I was in the presence of, at that point, what
I knew to be the Creator of the universe, who - a split second before - I didn't even
believe in. And He showed me the silhouette of a mountain,
and He said three things to me. He said, "If you want to be with Me like this
for all eternity, you need to start climbing the mountain." He said that the Bible was His Word, and that
I should start reading it. And then He said I should listen, because
He was going to begin to speak to me. And then immediately I was back behind the
wheel of the car. Sid: What happened to the car while you were
up there? Gary: I have no idea, Sid. But I started laughing and crying, and pounding
the steering wheel. And I said, “If nothing ever happens in
my life again, this is enough to last a lifetime.” And I went back, and I clocked how far the
car had gone, and it had gone eight miles without me. And I was on my way to see my mother. My mother is in the mental health field, and
I said, “I can't go see her, because if you tell people a story like this, they put
you away.” And so I turned around and I went to back
home to see Shirley, and I walked in the house. Now keep in my mind, she had been praying
for her alcoholic husband for seven years. I walked in the house; she looked at me. Sid: Stop. Stop. He walks in the house. You look at him. What goes on in here, Shirley? Shirley: Sid, I just said, “Something has
happened.” He's different. I realized -
Sid: What was different? Shirley: It was almost like - it was almost
like a glow. I mean, he had been so depressed, he had been
so down, and his countenance was lifted up. And I just - I knew something had happened,
and I couldn't imagine what. Because I hadn't seen him smile, really smile,
for a long time. Sid: What did you say to her? Gary: I walked in the room. She looked at me and said, "What has happened
to you?" Now I had determined I wouldn't tell her because
I figured nobody would believe this. She said, "What happened to you?" And I looked at her, and I said, "Shirley,
I've been with God”, thinking that she would laugh at that. She said, "Gary, I believe you." And then she said, "But you know what, Gary,
there's more." And of course, you know, being from Brooklyn,
and I was just so arrogant. I said, "More? What do you know? I've been with God; you haven't." She said, "Well Gary." Sid: Now you're “the expert”. From an atheist to the expert. Gary: She said, "Well Gary, the Bible says
there's more." And I said, "I'll believe anything in the
Bible." And so she went and got her Bible, and she
opened it to the New Testament, and I stopped her. I said, "Shirley, that's a Gentile Bible. I'm not a Gentile. God's not a Gentile. I'm not looking at a Gentile Bible." So then she had great wisdom. She went and she got the Bible we got married
with, which was an Old Testament Bible with a Star of David on it. And I said, "Yeah, that's a Jewish Bible. I'll believe anything in there." And she just started to show me the scriptures
from Isaiah 7, Isaiah 9, Isaiah 53. And I said, "My gosh! Look! It's in there! The virgin birth, and all the things." And at that point I asked Emmanuel into my
heart, and to be Lord, and I instantly got set free from any need of drugs and alcohol,
never having a problem again, never having to go to a meeting. Sid: But you had to drink. Drinking was your survival, your lifeline. Gary: Sid, if you knew how much I drank before
that moment. Just to give you an example, every day I would
drink a fifth of Scotch and a couple of six packs of beer, plus all the drugs. Sid: A fifth of Scotch? Gary: Every day. Sid: Hold it. We'll be right back. Instantly set free of depression, instantly
set free of alcohol, instantly set free of drugs. But there's more. Be right back. Sid: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter with
the Kivelowitz's. And before we go back to this amazing miracle
- and it gets better. I mean, you think that was something! Being caught-up out of the automobile; the
automobile going by itself. Oy vey! You need an imagination like this. But the changes that happened in their life,
you don't need imagination for that. That's real. I want to go to the control room right now
and find out who our guest is next week. Janie, who's up? Janie: Sid, you'll be interviewing Lauri Mallord
and this woman is a beautiful five-foot-six woman, but she was 95 pounds. She's an artist, an architect. But she was 95 pounds because she suffered
from anorexia and bulimia, and she used to mutilate herself. But an amazing miracle happened when she cried
out to God and she could feel the breath of God, and that totally changed her. Sid: She, in looking over the notes, Janie,
she literally would jam her hand down her throat to vomit and then she would, she would
have scars on her knuckles in her throat. I mean, she was really, it's life threatening. And from what I understand this is a serious
problem throughout the world. Janie: Well the statistics are that one in
hundred young women suffer from anorexia and then with the bulimia, it's at least five
percent of young women suffer from bulimia. Sid: And how about just being overweight? I mean, it's all, the bags, it's all together. Janie: Right. So the statistics would be a lot higher. Sid: Supernatural answers. Thank you, Janie. Now Gary and Shirley, you don't want to see
the New Testament, and so Shirley reads to you from the prophets; from Isaiah, the Jewish
prophet. And what did you think when you heard this? I mean, didn't you hear this, coming from
a Jewish background? Gary: No. I was raised in the temple. I was raised in the conservative temple, and
it was our life. And when I read the scriptures in Isaiah,
I thought to myself, “They lied to us. What they told us wasn't true.” And so when I saw that, I started reading
the Old and the New Testament; started reading it all. Sid: Now one of the things that I like about
you, is you said that you started believing everything you read, and you started praying
for people. Give me an example of someone you prayed for,
and what happened. Gary: Well what happened was I just believed. Because I had no background in this, when
I would read in the Bible, I just believed it. It said “… lay hands on the sick, and
they [would be healed]”. And so people were sick, and we would just
put our hand - I didn't know what “lay hands” meant; I figured it meant touch them - and
ask the Lord to heal them. And when we did that it started happening. Sid: Tell me one specific person. Gary: Well we've now been serving God for,
I guess, about 22 years. But the most dramatic that I could remember
was I was preaching in a large meeting in Haiti, and there were 6,000 people there. And when we got done, the interpreter said,
“Preacher, the power of God is here. Don't you think you ought to pray for people?” And I said, “Certainly.” And so we went in the crowd and we just started
praying over people - I mean, disease. We laid hands on one woman, and maggots would
run through your fingers; that's how awful it was. But in that meeting, a man who was blind from
birth - for the first time in his life - saw, and he saw clearly. At that meeting, a woman who was deaf got her
hearing. And in that meeting, there was a woman who
was 22 years old; had not walked in her entire life; was carried in on a mat. We prayed, she got healed, rolled up that
mat, and ran around the meeting for hours. Sid: Shirley, you've been healed. What were you healed of? Shirley: Well Sid, I've been healed of a couple
of different things. I've been healed of hernias. I was scheduled to have surgery, and before
the date of that surgery, a friend invited me to a service where there was a Catholic
priest who had a healing ministry. And I thought, “Well Gary had said to me,
‘You know, if you got healed, I guess I'd believe in God.’”, you know. So I went to this healing meeting before he
became a believer, and I was healed. I mean, I -
Sid: Instantly healed? Shirley: Instantly; instantly. Sid: Did you go back to the doctor? Shirley: I did and, you know, it - they have
a convenient way of explaining away miracles. But I know that I was healed because hernias
don't just go away, and I had at least two, and they were very painful for me. And I was scheduled to go for surgery, and
never went. I cancelled the appointment and, you know,
I just never went. And I'm fine; I have no hernias. I was healed of varicose veins. Sid: Most important, I want you to look at
your husband for a second and tell me what he's like today, as opposed to what he was
like before. Tell him; tell him. Shirley: You are awesome. You're my best friend. I can't believe what God has done in your
life - how He has turned you from a man who was really floundering, a man who really had
a great, great need - to a man who is meeting many, many needs of many pastors, wives, leaders. Gary, you're precious to me, and I appreciate
so much the gifts that you are. And it was worth the seven years’ wait. Sid: Gary, you almost blew it. Your children, when you look at your children
today, and see what you could have been, and what you chose -
Gary: Do you - every time I look at Shirley and I look at my children, and now our grandchildren,
I am so grateful for what God has done, and giving me another chance, and just to enjoy
life. And you know what, life is better than any
dream I could ever dream up. Sid: God wants to give you another chance. Yes, it's not an accident that you're watching
us right now. You see, you are special. God wants to change your chaos, just as He
changed Gary's chaos. Are you depressed? Are you an alcoholic? Are you into drugs? Are you just feeling frustrated? Do you sense there's got to be something more? There is. If you will call out to God, with a sincere
heart, say, “God, I've made many mistakes in my life, for which I'm so sorry. Please change me. I don't like the way my life is right now. I believe that Jesus died for all of my mistakes,
and I want His blood to wash away my sins. I want to be clean in Your sight, God. You're too good. I want to know You. I really do. I believe that Jesus is my Messiah and Lord. And Jesus, come inside of me. Take over my life. I make You Lord over every area of my life.” If you say a prayer to that effect - it doesn't
have to be the exact words - and mean it, it's not an accident you're watching me right
now. It's because you are loved. You are loved. I mean, you are loved by God. You're special. You really are. He sent me here to tell you that.
