From LSD to PhD: My Testimony Up Close and in Depth

The following is a pre-recorded program. We're going to go in depth today into my personal testimony from LSD to PhD. It's time for The Line of Fire with your host, activist, author, international speaker, and theologian, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural, and spiritual revolution. Michael Brown is the Director of the Coalition of Conscience and President of Fire School of Ministry. Get into The Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. That's 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey friends, thanks for joining us today on The Line of Fire.

I'm not taking any calls today. As I was praying and reflecting on content and things I wanted to share with you, I thought, you know, let me go a little deeper, tell you my own story, my own life background, how I fell into sin, how the Lord brought me out, how he saved me, and how I ended up on the trajectory of life calling, educational background, apologetics. I think you'll enjoy the story. I think you'll find it edifying.

I think you'll find it encouraging, and it is all to the glory of the Lord. Now, if you don't get my emails, please do. Take a moment now and go to AskDrBrown.org, A-S-K-D-R-Brown.org.

It'll just take you a couple of seconds, put in your name, your email. We'd love to be in regular contact with you. When you do, I'll share in writing with you a bit more about my background from LSD to PhD.

We'll let you know about the three R's of our ministry, the things that we give ourselves to day and night, and most importantly, we'll let you know about all the resources that we have, free resources that you can take advantage of so that we can equip and strengthen you to be on the front lines and to fulfill your calling in God so that together, in Jesus' name, in the name of Yeshua, our Messiah and King, together we can make a real difference. Okay, I was born in 1955 in New York City. My dad became the senior lawyer of the New York Supreme Court. He and my mom wonderfully, beautifully, happily married.

My sister, three and a half years older than me. We then moved to Long Island right before I turned seven years old. So, I grew up on Long Island in the suburbs.

My dad commuted into New York City every day. And I was a typical kid, Jewish kid, on Long Island. Mom and father, Jewish. We weren't religious Jews. The community I lived in had about 300 families, almost all of them Jewish, then right over the bridge, a larger community, almost all gentile.

But we went to school together, hung out together, played together. But I wasn't religious, so we would go to synagogue on the high holy days. High holy days. And then when I got a little bit older, getting close to 13, I had to go to Hebrew school a couple days a week. So it was after regular school, we'd walk over to the synagogue, some of the Jewish kids. We'd have these Hebrew classes, learn a little about Jewish history. And as it got closer to Bar Mitzvah time, then we would get the portion of Scripture that was set aside for that day of the year when we were born, being Bar Mitzvah, then learn to chant it in Hebrew. But the religious upbringing was such that I learned to chant it in Hebrew without anyone telling me, okay, Michael, here it is in English. Why don't you study it, look at it, reflect on it.

That wasn't even the issue. It was more getting through this ritual process. Now, I started playing organ when I was not even six years old. My sister and I started playing organ. And then when I was eight, I remember for my birthday somewhere around there, my parents, I was talking, hey, would I like a drum? And so I just got a snare drum and started playing drums and really liked playing drums and seemed to have some, you know, some skill just for a little kid. So my parents got me a teacher, a fellow in our community who was a professional drummer and among other things he did. And he tutored me and you saw, and then I got the whole drum scene, got me interested in different kinds of music.

And then the Beatles come to America on Ed Sullivan's show, 64. So I'm nine years old at that point, just an impressionable little kid, right? Anyway, just like your average kid, growing up in the suburbs, going to school, doing whatever homework had to be done, going to my friend's house. Every day we'd play ball, different friends, we'd play on the street, we'd play in somebody's driveway if they had, you know, a basket for basketball. We'd go back to the school where there were fields and courts and things like that. And that was it. We'd play over the weekend and play games and read, whatever.

Okay. Didn't have like these passionate interests and, you know, philosophical things I was following. So 13 years old, I get bar mitzvahed. And to be totally honest, it was not a spiritual event for me.

I didn't think of it in spiritual terms at all. It was something that I did because I was Jewish. And the big event was the party and having fun with my friends and all of that.

So it was a social event more than anything else. But later that year, November of that year, my dad got my sister and I tickets to see Jimi Hendrix in concert at the New York Philharmonic because I was into rock music then. And I was listening to it and the latest drummers and trying to learn what they were doing and duplicate what they were doing and things like that. And my drum teacher would say, hey, I've taken you as far as I can.

And he was really pleased with my progress and stuff. So I was really into this and that's what had a big spiritual impact on me. Not my bar mitzvah, but seeing Jimi Hendrix in concert. So an impressionable 13 year old and you've got this band in the Philharmonic.

I mean, the volume is so incredibly loud and everything about them is breaking the rules and different. And I had to be in a band. I wasn't playing in a band that I had to be in a band. I was just obsessed. I got to be playing in a band and just listening to the music day and night. Then I'm 14 years old and someone close friend says, hey, you want to try smoking pot?

Remember we're standing on the street in our neighborhood? You want to try smoking pot? And I knew that the rock stars got high and that had appealed to me because I wanted to be like them. They were like my idols now. I wanted to be like them. And of course they're all bigger than life.

They're these superstars and amazing. And then the other thing was it was forbidden. So sometimes something that's forbidden has a special allure to it. Come on, how many times are you walking past a wall or something and it says wet paint, don't touch. You've never thought of touching that wall in your life, but the thought is like, oh, should I touch it? Of course you don't.

Well, hopefully you don't because it's paint, but don't touch that. Oh, maybe I want to. Proverbs, the voice of foolishness says stolen water is sweet. Food eaten in secret is delicious. When you can't have it, you want it. Oh yeah, just being with your spouse, that's old hat.

Oh, but having an affair was, oh. So it's the appeal of the forbidden. And those two things together I thought, okay, let me try. I know I shouldn't do it, but let me try. So the person I'm with, they're smoking pot and they're telling me it is really good quality because they'd smoked pot before. And I smoke it, nothing happens. Literally nothing.

I feel nothing. Well, that got me curious. Rather than stopping there, it got me curious. So I decided, okay, next opportunity I had, I was with some friends and we were in my house this time in an upstairs room.

We'd hang out and listen to music and my parents just let us be in private up there. And they had hash. So that's one step up that's more potent than pot. And from what I understand, pot today that you can just buy legally in various states is much, much, much, much more potent than what we were smoking back then. So we're smoking hash and they're getting high and this is amazing. And I smoke it and literally I feel nothing.

Zero. So rather than quitting while I was ahead, now I want to find out, well, why are you experiencing something I'm not? So very quickly, that's why I started doing harder drugs. Other people, I knew smoked pot for years and hardly did anything beyond that. But for me, it's like, well, I want to get high like they're getting high. So immediately I started trying other drugs and it was quickly taking downs, barbiturates, or then taking ups. Wow.

World just feels like a better place. And then somewhere along the line, I remember I'm just 14 years old, somewhere along the way, LSD. I know the exact year that it was. I know that I didn't shoot heroin until I was 15. But LSD. And now you move into a whole different world, the world of psychedelics and the mind bending, mind stretching, and you think you're being enlightened. And now you listen to that same rock music and it sounds different. And hey, now it's not just Hendrix I'm seeing in concert, but I'm going to every concert I can. I see the Doors at Madison Square Garden, also Sir Janis Joplin at Madison Square Garden, but then discovered the Fillmore East. Now there are these places called Fillmore today, but there was the Fillmore East and the Fillmore West started by the music entrepreneur, Bill Graham.

And these places, oh, maybe they seeded a couple thousand and you walk in and the smell of pot and drugs is everywhere. And they have this light show behind the bands and there'd be three different bands in concert, you know, the top band being the final act. And it was this whole world just, whoa, I got caught up in it, went to every concert I could get to. Saw the Who performed rock opera, Tommy there. So Led Zeppelin there multiple times and Jethro Tull there multiple times. And all these other bands, some you'd know, you know, those that were into that era and Grateful Dead and Chicago and Chambers Brothers and John May.

I mean, it's just a host event, Johnny Winter and everyone I could see. And that was like the highlight of my life, going to these concerts, getting high, being immersed in this whole thing. And then met these two friends. We formed a band together because I was playing a band before then. And then with these guys, so every day after school, we'd just jam. And somehow my parents were okay with this loud music upstairs. We'd play every single day and we'd just play and jam. We were too young to play any places where they serve liquor or anything like that.

So we'd just play for friends, come on over, do like a little concert here and there. And that was it. That was like, get high, play music, get high, listen to music, get high, go to rock concerts.

That was it. And I had drawn clear lines. I remember using speed for the first time and snorting it and suddenly everything was wonderful. And the world was incredible. And I loved everybody. Everybody was my best friend. It was amazing.

And you know, you have these highs and it's this new experience for you. But I drew a line in the sand. I will never put a needle in my arm because I hung out with some friends and saw them do it. It's like, that's evil. That's like bad stuff.

That's like inner city troublemakers. Man, let's go to jail. Never do that. Then after a while, it's like, what happens if you shoot it? Now suddenly the world of the needle opens up to me and this now becomes utterly captivating and shooting drugs in your system and the instant, instant high. I'd even shoot LSD, whatever we could shoot, just try to experiment with it. But I had a line in the sand. I will never shoot heroin because that is really low life. I mean, that's criminal.

I will never do that. I got curious and like, what is heroin and why is it so appealing and why is it so powerful? So I'm on a bus coming home from hanging out with some friends one day.

I happen to be, it's just a largely black community and I'm the only white person on the bus. And I got long hair, hippie kid, and a guy on the bus looks over to me and says, do you know where I can cop some mescaline, where I can buy some mescaline? And I'm thinking this guy could be a narcotics agent, could be a cop, who knows? But in my foolishness, I said, and it happened to be the rare, rare time I had this powdered mescaline in my pocket, a rare drug in those days. I said, I got some on me. I said, do you know where I can cop some dope, meaning heroin? He said, I've got some on me. You talk about a satanic setup and right there, talk about foolishness, idiocy, 15 years old, right there on the bus, I take out my tinfoil, he takes out his, give him the amount, fold it up, he gives me his, how much, take all of it, how much, take all of it.

I got off the bus, which was, I don't know, a little over half mile from my house and ran home in excitement. I get to shoot heroin for the first time, 15 years old. It's the Line of Fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown. Get into the Line of Fire now by calling 866-34-TRUTH. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. I'm sharing in a bit more depth today my descent into sin and God's merciful salvation bringing me out and how he shaped life for me in the years thereafter.

Welcome to the Line of Fire. Michael Brown here sharing some of my story from LSD to PhD. Now obviously PhD does not personify who I am.

This is something in my life from decades ago, but it's a good rhyme, LSD to PhD, and when I first started sharing that, it was shortly after getting my PhD, so it worked well, but it's quite a contrast. So I'm 15 years old and I start shooting heroin. Of course, heroin is just a different drug for anyone that's ever done it and God delivered you from it, or if you're struggling now, hey, no, there is a place of deliverance and freedom. So it's not hallucinogenic. It's not like LSD.

It's not like speed rear up. It's a down in terms of just this, how do you describe it, kind of this dull euphoria that you're slowed down. You know, with certain drugs, your pupils will get giant. With other drugs, your pupils will get tiny. This is one they'd get tiny, but there is this like deep-seated peaceful euphoria and a physical feeling.

When you're shooting your veins, you feel it instantly. And this was my big problem. When I first tried getting high, it had no effect on me, pot, hash. When I started getting high effectively with ups, downs, speed, LSD, heroin, all the drugs I could use that were available, I realized that my body somehow was wired in such a way that I had a high resistance to drugs. And that remained the same after I was saved. Unless it was some kind of antihistamine for allergies that would knock me out, and those did knock me out, other things or vitamins or health things that would affect certain people a certain way didn't affect me.

My body just seemed to have a high tolerance for this. So in my foolishness as a rebellious teenager, that now became my boast of how much I could do. Plus, I was terribly reckless and would experiment with how far I could go on certain drugs. So if people were getting high and using tabs of acid that is something you put on your tongue and dissolve or a little pill you'd swallow, and with one tab they were like totally out in another world for 12 or 15 hours, I'd do three. I remember the time doing five. People were doing one and said this is the limit. I did five. And I also did it to see how far I could go without overdosing, how far my brain could take it.

Yeah, crazy, reckless, foolish teenager playing drums in my rock band, going to rock concerts, light high school schedule, giving me a lot of free time. And that was it. That was the goal. I was going to be a drug-using rock star. I wasn't strung out.

I wasn't suffering terrible withdrawal. I hadn't paid a penalty in terms of getting arrested. And in point of fact, I boasted about my sin. I was proud of it. I was that foolish and deluded to boast about it. John Bunyan once said, first we practice sin, then we defend it, then we boast about it.

So that was me boasting about it. And I was a wicked, angry, proud sinner in the midst of all of this. And my problem was, though, that drugs that were expensive, like heroin, if, and remember, I'm not working a job now, so how am I getting money for drugs? I'm selling drugs, right? I remember being in high school, like a gym class.

And, you know, so you're, you know, you're wearing your gym shorts. And so, and I remember having, you know, a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, you know, and it's like, yeah, I was selling drugs. So the problem is, if, if it would cost me $5 to get high on heroin one day, the next day was $10. The next day was $15.

By the fifth day, it was $25. So I would switch to another drug. Contrary to what you may hear, you're not going to develop a full addiction to most of these drugs just doing them for five days. I was addicted to the needle. I was addicted to the need for putting drugs in my system. But I'd switched to a less expensive drug.

So that became part of the problem. But, but my identity, oh, I was proud. I was known as Drug Bear and Iron Man. And now I'm 16 years old, but I'm starting to pay a bit more price for my drug use. My morals are degenerating more. I'm becoming more of a despicable person. And I attribute that especially to the influence of heroin in my life and the power of that drug.

And playing with my friends in a rock band. But they're, they're starting to change a little bit. They're like two girls from their high school. These girls started going to an Italian Pentecostal church. Their dad got saved shortly after getting married, but before they were born. So they were praying for their salvation, their whole lives. Their uncle was the pastor. And they just started going there. I think the older sister drawn a little bit, the younger sister coming with her.

So my two friends in the band, they liked these girls. So they'd go to the services with them. And they'd come home from the service and maybe be like, I don't know, nine in the evening. And we'd be sitting around getting high. And they'd be playing acoustically, bass and guitar acoustically.

And I'd be having my little drum pad and we'd just be doing, you know, jamming quietly because it was nighttime. And they'd be telling me about what they're learning in the church. And it was fascinating to them. They would tell me about, yeah, people are demon-possessed. We heard about someone who was demon-possessed years ago. And the pastor drove the spirit out of her and they saw like a snake come out of her mouth. Like, really?

Wow. And then they said, yeah. And they pray for the sick. They believe in miracles, you know, whatever the talk was. But I remember distinctly them telling me, because the pastor was teaching a lot out of the book of Revelation. He said, my kid, there's going to be this bottomless pit and this beast with seven heads and ten horns.

It's going to come out of the pit. It's like, rule the world. And we're all getting high, literally.

And they're telling me this. I'm like, that's in the Bible, man? Like, what were they smoking? Yeah, like Moses on Mount Sinai. What was he smoking?

And just joking about it, laughing about it. But little by little, the gospel started to take hold in their lives and they started to change. They didn't want to get high. They didn't want to party with me. They certainly weren't going to shoot heroin and the things I was doing. And they felt I was going in a destructive direction. And we had done some crazy things before. We broke into a couple of homes just for fun. I broke into one on my own. I was terrified. Did that just to see what I could find in those days, you know, needing some money. We broke into a doctor's office just on a lark to do something crazy and stole some drugs and ended up mainlining adrenaline and almost killed ourselves, literally.

I mean, it must have been an interest from death with that. But now they're living differently. And I'm thinking, this is going to break up the band. We're going to be famous and rock stars and drug users and all this. So I finally decide in August of 71, 16, it turns 16 in March of that year, I'm going to go and pull them out. I'm going to pull them out of the silly church. I'm going to go to a service and then show them this is stupid and argue with them and all that. But the people there, I don't know, 40, 50 people, max, so loving towards me.

And I come in there, you know, my shirt tails out and all the little holes in your shirt because you'd be smoking pot and get down these little things at the end and you drop it and burn a hole in your shirt. So I come in there, you know, just they were loving and gracious. And I remember two guys greeting me at the door.

They're in their 60s and they're full of vigor and love. And I don't remember a word that the pastor preached or anything. Remember at the end of the service, he said, there's someone here. If you don't surrender your life to Jesus tonight, it's all over.

This is your last chance. And I'm thinking, oh, they all think it's me, the big sinner. But it wasn't me.

It was somebody else. You know, they prayed for this person at the altar, whatever. And I thought, how are these people are really nice? My friends want to go here. They have their religion.

I have mine. Fine. Whatever, you know. And what I didn't know is they started praying for me. These precious Italian Pentecostals started praying for me. And decades later, just a few years ago, so it was 45 years after the fact, I was talking to one of the young ladies.

She was a couple years younger than us. We got saved, the pastor's oldest daughter. And she said, oh yeah, we pray for you all the time. We pray for you in our homes. We pray for your prayer meetings. We pray for you in church services. God just dropped them on my heart. So here I am, literally, one day boasting about my sin.

And the ugliest, worst, most vile thing I did was stole money from my own father, to my shame, stole money from my own father. And I'd be laying in bed at night, high on some drug, not able to sleep, not wanting to sleep. Because if I wanted to sleep, I'd just fall asleep. It's crazy.

My body was just different in that way. And I'm laying in bed late at night thinking of how cool you are, so cool you deceive your own father. You ripped your friends off.

They don't even know it. You are cool. That's pretty sick. That's pretty twisted, yeah, to be thinking like that.

But that's how lost I was. The next night, I'm laying in bed. I can't sleep. I'm tormented by the exact same thoughts. The ones I was boasting about days, weeks earlier in my thoughts, I'm now tormented by.

I want to get out of my body. I feel so guilty and miserable. I don't know what it is.

I don't know what conviction is. I don't know they're praying for me. I just thought, man, I can't use some of these drugs now because they're keeping me up and I can't sleep.

It's tormenting me. But it was the Holy Spirit convicting me. Oh, and I had one event. I came.

Well, I'll tell you what happened real quick. I did some barbiturates one night and then hung out with some friends, and they had this powdered mescaline. Anyone could take as much as they wanted. People were dipping their fingers in two to ten times. The bold guys, ten times.

Some of the girls were a little shy twice. I asked the guy how much I could take. He said, as much as you want.

I said, nobody ever told me that. I'm already, my speech is slurred because of the barbiturates. I took two handfuls, literally reached in with my fingers.

Two, so handfuls, fingerfuls. They calculated I did enough for 30 people. I had no clue what was going on. I was completely lost in hallucination. My friends put me on a bus, sending me home, thinking I'll just make it home.

I got off the bus several stops too early. Walking home, I thought it was over. I thought I was in hell. I thought what my friends had told me was true. I completely lost touch with reality. I finally decided it's one in the morning. I was just, oh, a block and a half from my home where my parents live. But I was completely overwhelmed. I thought I was in hell.

I thought it was over. I decided I'm going to jump in front of the next car that comes around the curve, literally. And it's now one something in the morning. Car comes around the curve, going pretty fast. There are bushes and trees, so you can't really see what's happening. I jump in front of it and it stops right at me, inches from hitting me. It's my parents. A neighbor had been walking by, saw me, realized what was going on, that I'd lost my mind or something.

Went and told my parents and they came to get me. Anybody else, I'd be dead. There would be no story. There would be no testimony. I would have been lost forever.

And that was Labor Day weekend. So this is only a few weeks after going to that church, September of 1971. By the end of that year, I was radically, wonderfully, gloriously born again by the power of God. God answers prayer. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. So I'm sharing my personal testimony in depth today, how I fell deeply into sin, rebellion, all kinds of sinful drug abuse, and how the Lord graciously saved me. So I had gone to a church service at this little Italian Pentecostal church, August of 71, for the first time. A young lady who knew me from high school, the older of those two sisters who had been going there to their uncle's church, and my friends went to spend time with them, and they all got saved.

I went to pull them out. She had journaled in August of 71, Antichrist comes to church. That's how evil I was. That's what I was known for.

Drug bear, Iron Man, but worse, an evil human being. She journaled that. The church began to pray for me. The Holy Spirit began to convict me of sin. God saved me from death. God saved me from foolish overdoses. I wasn't trying to commit suicide with the overdoses. I was experimenting. I loved getting high, and I wanted to see how high I could get. And because I had the reputation of being drug bear, Iron Man, I wanted to build into that reputation.

That is the foolishness and destructive nature of sin. So, November 12, 1971, I went back to a service. My friends and I hadn't been hanging out together, band members. We hadn't been practicing together.

I was upset with them because of their changed life. And I talked to one of my friends, and I said to him, listen, man, you want me to go to a church service with you. I'll do it if you party with me. Come out.

We'll get high. Hang out with old friends, and then I'll go to church services. I can't do that. Well, I hung up the phone on. You have to understand, for me, in those days, hanging up the phone on someone was nothing. I was a harsh human being, and to hang up was not a second's thought.

It would not dawn on me that I'd done anything that I didn't want to do by hanging up. But this time, I felt a little guilty. I felt uncomfortable, and I called them back and said, I'll go to church with you tonight. So, I went to the church service, and I don't remember what the pastor preached on. I don't remember much about the service, but at the end of the service, he gave an altar call, which he did after every message.

Even if it was the same people there every night, he did it. Anyone here needs to receive Jesus, born again, however he put it, come forward. And my friend nudged me, my friend John nudged me, you know, you should go forward. And I thought, you know, at this point, I found out these people have been praying for me, and they think I'm this really bad sinner.

So, you know what? I think I'll just go up and do it, and they'll think, oh, he got saved, whatever, and I'll walk out. I didn't mean anything by it. I didn't intend for the rest of my life to change.

I just thought, whatever, these old people, they'll get a big kick out of it. Now, on the other hand, my friends had been sharing the gospel with me day and night for weeks and even months. And even though we weren't hanging out and partying the way we used to, they were still talking to me. And I had heard the gospel over and over and over, and there were things that were penetrating, and there were things that, even though I didn't understand it yet, my heart was opening up to. So I go up, and the pastor says, do you believe Jesus died for your sins? And to my shock, I said, yes, I do. Now, I wasn't shocked that I said it. I was shocked that I believed it.

Something was happening in my heart. And he said, do you believe that he rose from the dead, you know, whatever the confession was. I said, yes, I do. And he said, do you promise to live for him the rest of your days? And I said, yes, I do. But I didn't mean that.

I absolutely did not mean that. I had no intention of repenting of my sin. The pastor took me to his words, said, I believe you. And he prayed for me. He said, hey, come on, let's come around this brother and pray for him and all that. So they all come up to the altar.

They're standing around me, praying, not laying hands on me, just praying around me. And I said, God, you know what I'm doing when I get home tonight. I had bought this one drug called Angel Dust or PCP, which would smoke, but it was hallucinogenic. It was very powerful. And then cocaine had just come on the scene in our area. And because I was dealing drugs then, and we kept them in the guitar case for the guitar player in our band, you know, just close that and just put all the packets of cocaine in there that we'd sell. I had a lot of that drug.

And I tried it once before, but I hadn't done enough to really experience it. So I was shooting cocaine that night. So remember, I don't know anything.

I am brand new, and God meets me in my ignorance. I said, God, when I go home tonight, you know I'm getting high. You know I'm smoking PCP. You know I'm shooting cocaine.

If you don't want me to, if you don't want me to, when I get high tonight, don't let it have any effect on me. So I went home, and my friends came with me because it's still our, you know, custom. I went to the service with them, so they came back with me.

And right in their presence, I did all this. I smoked a large joint of PCP. This stuff was so potent that it could like knock a horse out.

I mean, maybe that's an irrelevant point, but you know what I'm saying. A few people would have shared that joint and gotten very high. I did the whole thing myself. And then I did a substantial amount of cocaine, because the first time it didn't really affect me, so I did a much higher amount.

One after the other. This is a crazy concoction of drugs I was doing. And my heart just started to pound, and then just stop. Stop. Nothing. Nada.

No feeling whatsoever. And I realized, okay, something is going on here. So now I'm wrestling.

I go to church with them one day. I'm shooting heroin the next. Back and forth.

Back and forth. Until one service, a friend of mine said, hey, just got a new batch of heroin. It's incredible, but I can't get high where I am. I want to come over to your house, and I'll share some with you.

And I'm thinking, okay, it's a church night. Because I would get high one day. I'd smoke pot morning, afternoon, evening. And at that point in life, it was, you know, I got high off of it when I first started. I didn't, but then I was. And then I'd shoot heroin, do whatever. But it was a church day.

I didn't get high. And that's just the double life I'm living. The back and the forth. The struggle. Believing more and more, but saying, but I love putting... If I follow Jesus, then I could never put a needle in my arm again. And I can't say that.

The thought of never, forever. I thought, I can't say that. So he says, I'm going to come over.

It's like, okay, fine. But the problem was, it was a church night. Well, he shows up late. And the people come to pick me up early. And he's upstairs in my house in our band room with the drum set and all that, with a needle in his arm, getting high. And I kick him out of the house.

And I don't get high myself. And that was a turning point. December 17th comes now, shortly after that. I can't wait to get to the service. I cannot wait to get there. Now, remember, I have been to rock concerts for several years running every concert imaginable that I could get to. Every band. And I would check, and sometimes I'd get seats right in the front row. And I would test the volume of the band by screaming at the top of my lungs while they were playing.

If I could hear myself scream, they weren't loud enough. Now I'm in this little church where the pastor's wife is playing piano. Sometimes her brother-in-law, with a company on guitar, used to be a jazz guitarist.

You'd be in the background, just little notes here and there. But notice it's her playing piano, playing hymns. So I'm going from Led Zeppelin, Dazed and Confused, and Jimi Hendrix, Foxy Lady, to the pastor's wife playing piano. There's within my heart a melody. Jesus whispers sweet and low. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. There's power in the blood.

But I'm singing these songs, and we'd sing maybe three. And I get absolutely overwhelmed with the joy of the Lord. It is of a different quality than anything I have ever experienced in my life.

And the church used to talk a lot about the joy of the Lord. Joy unspeakable and full of glory. And I said to myself, okay, just think back to every high you've had or every joyful experience.

And you know how sometimes in a moment of time, your life can pass before you? In a moment of time, I think of the highest drug high I ever had. I thought, no, it's different. The highest music high ever. No, this is different. The highest high of just, like, sports or some victory. I thought, no, this is different. The highest high of just being a friend.

Just camaraderie with someone or doing a good thing. And I thought, no, this is of a different quality. This is something of an entirely other nature. This must be what they call the joy of the Lord. And suddenly, I got this overwhelming revelation. I saw myself, because I'd known the gospel was true.

I had known this. I had prayed for forgiveness, but I was still living in over at rebellion and back and forth struggling. I had this vision as clear as day in my mind's eye. I saw myself covered in mud and filth from head to toe. I saw the blood of Jesus just wash me clean. And then I saw these beautiful white robes put on me. And I was going back out and playing in the mud. And right then and there, I said, God, I will never put a needle in my arm again. And I was free from that night on. Absolutely free.

Never went back a single time. Delivered by the power of God. No withdrawal. Nothing.

Set free. Two days later, I was with some friends and they were smoking hash. And I smoked hash with them.

On the bus, going home, still high, I realized, no, no, no. This is sinful, too. Yeah, I had to deal with the needle.

That was the stronghold. But this is sinful, too. God, I'll never get high again. And by the grace of God, He kept me strong from that day. And I had, about two weeks after that one real heavy temptation, where I was with people and it's opportunity to get high, and then I ran out of it. Literally, I ran out of it. Just got out.

I got to get out of this. And that was it. By the grace of God. And when I first went to church service, you know, and after getting serious with the Lord, you know, early on, and my dad said I was church today, so I got saved tonight. He just said, hallelujah. You know, that was his Jewish way of joking there, right? But when he saw the change in my life, when he saw the profound change, because he and my mom knew that at one point they found out from someone close to me I was shooting heroin.

They got really concerned. He wasn't concerned about smoking pot. I remember my dad saying, look, one day pot's going to be legal.

You smoke pot, do it in the house. I mean, that's how liberal he was back then. But now he's concerned about more drugs. And then, so I convinced him I'd stop shooting heroin and so on. But I remember him coming to me. He said, you're a pothead.

You smoke pot day and night. You know, look at you. And he was upset.

And, you know, and they had cracked down on friends coming over and certain things. And he knew I'd stolen money from him. But now he saw the profound change in my life. And when he asked me point blank, ultimately I had to confess to him, yes, I'd stolen money, which he knew.

It had forgiven me amazingly. But he knew. He just said, hey, Michael, if you had a need, why don't you come to me? That was my dad, if you can imagine that. But I was so changed. He saw it.

And he and my mom were thrilled. But he was the more religious between the two of them. And he said, Michael, I'm glad you're off drugs, but we're Jews.

We don't believe in this. I want you to talk to the local rabbi. I said, of course. And this rabbi was about 11 years older than me, fresh out of Jewish Theological Seminary, had taken over from the previous rabbi. And that would have been a rabbi after the one that bar mitzvahed me.

So this has been the third one in our synagogue from when I was bar mitzvahed just a few years earlier. And I meet this local rabbi. He immediately befriends me. And that also becomes a turning point in my life.

Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Hey, can I be totally honest with you? I feel the joy of the Lord as I'm sharing my testimony with you. As I'm getting in depth and sharing God's mercy, I have such a feeling of joy and grace in rehearsing the goodness of God.

And maybe you're praying for a loved one that's been away from the Lord. You know, the fellow that helped lead me to Jesus, my best friend, he was the bass player in our band, we were real close with the guitar player. The three of us were inseparable back then. The two of them got saved. Then I got saved. And then I was the best man in my friend John's wedding, and he was the best man in my wedding. And after several years, he fell away. And he was away from the Lord for over 40 years. And often God would bring him to mind, and I'd pray sometimes with tears. And then a few years back, we started to get in contact after long, long periods of, I mean, many years with no contact. And then it'd be a few years between any contact at all.

Got back in contact more. God began dealing with him. Remember, we were talking. He said, hey, Mike, I'm starting to doubt my doubts. And over process of time, oh, starting about two years back, God got hold of him. And he is in love with Jesus again.

And reading the Word just has this deep sense of one of the, preach the gospel to everyone. So maybe there's a loved one you're praying for that's fallen away. Have faith.

God's faithful. God can bring that person to the end of himself or the end of herself and bring them back. Or maybe a loved one that's never been saved.

The same one that dramatically saved me can save that loved one. Or maybe you're where I was. I was a proud sinner. I thought I was doing great, but I was hellbound and miserably lost. Maybe that's you if you truly cry out to God. God, I have to know you. God, I have to turn my life around. I need forgiveness. I believe Jesus died for me.

I believe he rose from the dead. I want to live a new life. If you cry out to him, he will meet you.

If you do that, contact us through the website askdrbrown.org, askdrbrown.org, and we'd love to point you in the right direction to grow and move forward. So my dad sets up a meeting for me to meet with the local rabbi. And it was January 24th of 1972, so I'm still not 17 years old yet. But that night at prayer meeting for the first time, I began to speak in tongues. It was Pentecostal church filled with the Spirit, speaking in tongues. So we had to go out and celebrate. So I showed up at the synagogue, and my dad and the rabbi are waiting there. And I tell the rabbi, look, I'm so sorry, but I can't be with you tonight. I was baptized in the Holy Ghost and spoke in tongues. And the rabbi says to me, Mazel tov.

That's what he says. And so we went out and had pizza, then set up a meeting afterwards. And he and I become friends. And we begin to have these in-depth conversations. I remember I'm new, but I'm reading the Word a lot and growing. And he's a brilliant guy and, of course, knows the Bible, Hebrew Bible fluently.

And he's now reading the New Testament to see what he sees are the errors and the problems there and things. And we're talking regularly. And he took a real interest in me, a real personal interest. We've even been in touch in recent years, all these decades later.

He's now in his late 70s. And I remember talking to him one day, and he was challenging me about what the Hebrew said. And I said, well, I looked in the back of Strong's concordance. He got strong. He said, if you don't know Hebrew, I said, look, I'm going to learn Hebrew.

In the meantime, I'm looking in Strong's concordance. I remember he said to me, in the meantime, she mean time, if you don't know Hebrew, it doesn't mean a thing. How can you teach us what the Old Testament says? So we continue our dialogue back and forth, very respectful, very gracious towards me.

I'd spend time with him and talk about other issues. But he realized, okay, I need to bring him to another rabbi. Because the synagogue where I was bar Mitzvah was a conservative synagogue, which is not, doesn't mean conservative politically.

It's just a conservative branch of Judaism, but it's very wishy-washy. On a given Sabbath, you might not even have 10 men for the minimum quorum for the minion to have a formal prayer service. But the High Holy Days, they had to build an annex that seated, I don't know, maybe 400 people because we'd flock there on the High Holy Days. And that's when you'd raise the money in membership for the rest of the year.

But a weekly service, there's nobody there. You know, in this bar Mitzvah, you'd have more people because family would show up. So he realized, even though he was very sincere religiously, intellectually, he questioned whether Moses wrote the Pentateuch and various other things. And, you know, that was his educational study. So he couldn't be an Orthodox Jew intellectually.

But in his heart inclination, he was. And I remember he said to me one day, he said, look, Michael, the problem is that you're a more pious individual than I was. If we were both Buddhists, you would be a more pious Buddhist than I was.

He said, you need to meet Jews who are just as pious as you, except you're right. Now, at this point, I was spending between six and seven hours every day in the Word of Prayer. Memorizing 20 verses a day would take me an hour, reading the Bible two hours, and praying at least three hours. And now I just finished the season of doing that every day for six months. Now it's August of 73. I'm 18 years old, but I'm working a job.

Now working a job, and my schedule's limited. I don't have the six or seven hours, but I've had a good immersion for a year and a half in the Lord, in the Word of Prayer, and read the King James Bible through almost five times at that point, memorized probably 4,000 verses. So this rabbi brings me to meet ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Now, see, I had never met Jews like that. My perception was the ultra-Orthodox Jews or the Orthodox Jews who lived in another town nearby us, they were kind of crazy. You know, they kept the dietary laws, they prayed early every morning.

They're growing up, that's what I thought. They're like the crazy ones. There's even a joke, you know, a Jewish joke, that the Orthodox are crazy, the Conservative are hazy, you don't know exactly where they stand, and the Reform, the most liberal, are lazy. And I remember talking to some of my Jewish friends about the Orthodox Jews, oh yeah, they're kind of crazy, because they really believed the traditions.

We were the outliers, not believing. They were the ones that really believed their traditions. I thought Judaism was what I experienced in my synagogue, this wishy-washy kind of dead religion, whereas in the church the people were devoted and they prayed, they said praise to the Lord when you met them and shook hands.

So now this rabbi takes me to meet these ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn from the Lubavitch sect, Hasidic Jews from Lubavitch, also known as Chabad. And I remember when my rabbi meets one of them, says, how are you doing? He goes, thank God, thank God, good.

He's got the long beard, the black coat, you know, the hat and all that. I'm thinking, thank God. He said, thank God. That's like what we do in our church. I've never heard Jews greet each other like that. Well, these were religious Jews, these were the real McCoy, so to say. So the rabbi leaves me with them for several hours, and they really liked me because I was passionate, sincere, and knew the Bible, but no Hebrew.

The little Hebrew I learned at my bar mitzvah I'd long since forgotten. And they're challenging me, very nice, very gracious. They say, look, look, those English translations, oh, oh, I get quoted and they go, oh, oh, here, look, let's look at the Hebrew. And they go, look, we're not lying to you, and they're just going letter for letter. So now I feel like a little kindergartener, this little child. And even though some of the answers they gave me in retrospect were weak, at that moment they hit me hard.

They really threw me. And before that, my rabbi friend had brought me to peek in the synagogue, and we're both wearing yarmulkes, and we go in there, and there's men, you know, in their long beards and prayer shawls, and the praying and reading from the Hebrew, and felt like, wow, this like feels like I just went back to Moses' day, and shouldn't I be doing that? That's what Jewish people do. I'm in a church. And I remember the rabbi saying, hey, they don't have a little box in front for the yarmulkes, because the synagogue where I went, you walked in bareheaded, there was a little box that you put the yarmulke on, went to the service, then took the yarmulke off and went home.

Maybe the rabbi kept his on because he was religious, but we didn't. So I've never been confronted with all this, and it shook me, and it raised questions. I knew that Jesus had changed my life. I knew that I knew that God had worked in my life in very real ways.

I knew I experienced real fellowship with him in prayer and worship. I couldn't deny that, but I couldn't answer their questions about messianic prophecy, and about other things like that, and about Jews and the Torah, and so on. And their answers really threw me in so many ways, whereas we looked at the law as this terrible burden, thank God we're not under the law. They're like, what a gift, what a gift from God that we get to keep all the commandments, and their attitudes were different. I remember talking about spiritual, their mountain peaks and valleys.

I'm like, yeah, that's what we talk about. It sounds so similar in terms of spiritual experience, and so on. And that is what got me on my journey of saying I have to study. I know that Jesus changed my life, but what if I'm wrong in my beliefs?

What if this thing is not true? So I determined I have to follow the truth wherever it leads. Now, initially, okay, I'm going to start learning Hebrew in college, so they only have modern Hebrew, so I asked the rabbi what I should do for biblical. He recommends a very technical grammar, so I taught myself biblical Hebrew through that grammar while taking modern Hebrew classes. And I immersed myself in learning Hebrew, and then the surrounding languages, and I met with these rabbis again, spent hours and hours with them, even spent the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement directly with them, just to be in the midst of things, and be in synagogue services, and praying with them, you know, all day and all night, and that kind of thing. And the more I dove in, the more I studied, the more I got on my face and said, God, whoever's right, if these rabbis are right, then I'll take the reproach of being wrong about Jesus.

And if Jesus is true, then I'll take the reproach of the Jewish community rejecting me. I just have to follow you and your truth as a loyal Jew. The more I dug, the more I studied, the more I found I was on the side of truth, the more I found confirmation for what I believe. And I did that all the way through grad school, through my PhD, the intellectual challenges posed by my professors, and the intellectual challenges posed by Old Testament studies, and constant debate and dialogue with the Jewish community.

Debate and dialogue that goes on to this day, literally to this day, by email and private interaction. My determination has been, God, I'm going to honor you, whatever the cost, whatever the consequence, whether by life or by death, I'm going to follow you and your truth. And I'm so pleased to share almost 50 years now in the Lord, November, December, next 50 years, I am so thrilled to share that I know and have known for decades with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my mind, with all my being, that Jesus, Yeshua is Messiah and Lord, and that he will return one day and set up his kingdom. I encourage you to pursue God and pursue the truth in prayer and study and in earnestness. Whoever you are, if you don't agree with me, say, God, I just want to know the truth. If you're really there, I just want to know the truth. And if you'll help me to see it, regardless of what it's going to cost me to follow, I must know you and I must follow you. My friend, if you seek him with all your heart, you will find another program powered by the Truth Network.