Being from a Jewish family in the 1950's and 60's, ‘Jesus’ was not a word that one heard very often. And when it was heard it was usually not in a very positive light. Maybe December thoughts, like, "I suppose we’ll be ‘Jesus’d’ to death now at the Holidays".

So when I accepted Jesus and was Born Again, it came as a pretty big surprise to me. But this story is not about me, or my own testimony. This story is about my mother, Joan (pronounced JoAnn).

She was born Johanna...with the ‘J’ pronounced like a ‘Y’. Johanna Goldman. Her grandparents had immigrated from Berlin in the mid 1800’s. Johanna was born in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Her father was a dentist. Her mom, a Jewish mom.

Joan raised three children, including me, the youngest, born in ’48. My parents raised us all to be Jewish, but not serious Jewish. The family attended Temple on Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur...we 2 boys were each Bar Mitzvah’d...and Dad stayed active in the Temple...perhaps more out of civic duty than commitment to God. But, that is strictly supposition, since dad died late in 1975, a year before I was Born Again, and I never did have the opportunity or inclination back then to discuss God with him.

Mom was an emancipated woman long before it was fashionable. It seemed she was President of everything...from PTA to Woman’s Club. In fact, just a few months after dad died, her friends living in Florida where she and dad had retired in ’70 convinced her to run for mayor of her town, where she was already serving as a planning commissioner and councilperson.. She lost the mayoral race, but it was a close race.

We noticed mom acting strangely in the early 1980’s. She was in her 60’s, and she seemed to be becoming forgetful and disoriented.

It became evident after a year or two, that there was a real problem. It was obvious she could no longer mentally function well enough to drive a car or even live alone. The diagnosis was conclusive. Alzheimer’s disease.

Eventually we placed mom into Julia Temple nursing home in Denver, the city in which my brother was, and is still, a psychiatrist.

Mom deteriorated rapidly in the late 1980’s. She already was unsure who anyone was, including her children, and by the early 1990’s she looked like she was 100 years old...wasting away...strapped up into a wheelchair...smelling from her own excrement...in the dementia ward of a nice nursing home, that although clean and professional was nothing less than Bedlam. Patients were howling, moaning and crying out. The only way out of the ward, was to pass away.

Mother could no longer form sentences. She understood nothing. Ask her if she was hungry, and the response might be to hear the syllables ‘Becker Becker Becker’ yelled out insanely. She had no concept of reality, where she was, or obviously, who she was.

She was a terrible patient. The only real words she seemed to use were 4-letter swear words....yelled out angrily at nothing and no one.

She was virtually incoherent. Probably had lost 50 pounds, and looked like a concentration camp victim.

Throughout her decline, I kept traveling from my home in California to Denver, 2 or 3 times a year, to visit her in the ward. She did not know who I was, but I kept feeling the Lord telling me to go. To read the bible to her. To just say, "God loves you" in her ear. She was still my mom...and it broke my heart every time I saw her.

After time, my heart started growing callous. I would go strictly out of obedience to God’s prompting. I had already mourned her death time and time again for years. I expected no miraculous healing. CAT scans showed at least half her brain was now just water. Oh sure, I knew that God could do anything, but I really did not expect the story to end by her being somehow miraculously healed with a new brain and back to normal. And I was right. There was no miraculous healing.

When mom left Julia Temple Nursing home it was to go directly to a funeral home, August 16, 1993. Her last months were spent in a fetal position, no mind at all, her arms and legs looking like those photos we see of skin and bone victims in Nazi Germany.

But, we have to back up 2 years from August 16, 1993... because this story did NOT have an unhappy ending. Because something happened in 1991.

It was summer, 1991. I was making yet another trip to Denver to see mother. By this time she could not speak. She was only uttering syllables of non-coherent baby talk...and yes, those occasional outbursts of four letter words. Strange, because mother never used those words when she was healthy and normal and stood erect and swore that the one thing she never wanted to have happen to her was to end up in a nursing home with no mind.. exactly where she was now.

A few days before I left for Denver, I was showering. My mind was drifting and for a few moments I was in a different state of mind. Not aware of where I was. Not day dreaming. I can only describe it as a vision.

I saw and felt myself walking.. walking down a road. Standing in the middle of the road was some green ugly specter.. brandishing a sword and almost daring me to approach, to most certainly be slain.

I was scared. I knew it was Satan. I stopped and stood still. And I thought to myself that surely Satan could not have any power over me. How could he kill me? I had already ‘died’ in my Spirit and had asked Jesus to live in me.

With that thought, my feet started forward again, walking boldly toward the specter in the road. I was now just a few feet away, and the sword was being raised to strike me. I continued forward without a hesitation, and literally walked right through the specter, as if it were just a mist, and nothing more. I was alive and well, and untouched.

And as immediately as the vision began, it ended. I was still standing in the hot water of the shower, and said to myself...’Whoa, what was THAT all about!?!’ ‘How weird.’ And how...well, irrelevant to my life. ‘Walking through Satan?’ ‘Huh’?

Well, it really made no sense at all...and in less than a minute, I had forgotten all about it, and was concentrating on getting dried, dressed and ready for work...with not another thought about some weird vision.

Days passed, and I was on my way to Denver, Bible in hand, and faith ebbing. ‘OK, God....I’ll go. I hate traveling, but I’m going’." "Besides, what’s the sense. I’m reading Scripture to someone with the mind of a 3 month old....but OK, OK, I’ll do it. I love you. I want to always be obedient. But Lord, isn’t this becoming just a little much? OK, OK, it’s not for me to know why. I’m going’, I’m going’."

And so, I was back in Denver. Boy it’s dry in Denver. My lips feel like leather. And there’s no oxygen in this darn place. I wish I were back home on the seacoast in California. Haven’t seen mom yet. No real reason to rush it. What’s the difference, anyway.

Well, the visit is over with my brother and his wife. Guess that what I will do is see mom on the way to the airport since the nursing home is on the way to the airport. I’ve done it that way before. I'll pray about it. Yes, that is how the Lord wants me to go this time also.

My brother Alan and I left the house and started for the airport. For some reason, hopefully being led by the Holy Spirit, I asked Alan to please call ahead from the car, as a ‘doctor’ AND family member.. and please ask the nursing home to put mother in a private room.. where I can talk to her alone for the few minutes I'll be with her.. away from the Bedlam, so I could at least close the door and have a few minutes of privacy. Reading the Bible to someone incoherent is hard enough without doing it in the middle of an asylum.

We arrived at Julia Temple Nursing Home. We entered. GOD, I hate that smell.

We go upstairs to the ward... the 'last stop' for patients no longer able to sit up, or eat for themselves. The smell is even worse and the screams and howls from the bedridden and wheel chair bound are constant. Alan excuses himself to allow me to be alone with mother in the room where the nurses had placed her.

I entered. And there she sat. What was left of a human being.. after doctors, society and family give up on a person...and try to keep the person comfortable and cared for until they pass away.

I entered the room, pulled up a chair in front of her wheel chair.. put her skeletal hand in mine and looked into her eyes. No life there. The kind and soft color and light that was always in my mom’s eyes when she would look at her baby son, was gone.

More for lack of anything else to do or say than for some high spiritual purpose, I opened the Bible, to John I think. I started reading. I suppose I made it through a verse or two. But the words were flat. No life. Not to me, certainly not to mother.

I was moved to try again. I started reading again. I looked at my mother, and out of nowhere a voice came out of her mouth that shook me to my very foundation. It was straight from hell and sounded exactly like that deep guttural awful voice in the movie, ‘The Exorcist’.

The voice bellowed out, "You’ll Lose!"

Chills went through my body. My spirit went cold and my jaw literally dropped in fear. I couldn’t think or speak. I was shocked into being virtually disabled for a few moments. . . unable to think or move.

Then my mind flashed to something. The vision. The one in the shower, when I got bold in faith and walked straight through that specter, unharmed and untouched.

I opened my mouth. I said, "Lose? No! I’ve already won! I cast you out in the name of Jesus!"

And nothing happened. Uh oh, I think I'm in trouble.

And then a voice came out of my mouth that was truly not my own. It was strong, and firm and had nothing to do, with ‘me’.

And that voice coming from me but that was not my own, said, "I am Jesus and you will leave - now!"

In a split second Mother’s body sagged back in the wheelchair. Her face looked like a 500 pound weight had been removed and her every muscle seemed to be relaxed and relieved. I looked into her eyes. They were clear. There was life in them.

I was afraid to talk. I gathered some courage, and said, "Joan?"

And her own voice answered perfectly clear, lucid, resonant and calm, "Yes?"

"Do you love God?" I asked.

"Yes, I do", she said with a voice more clear, perfect and normal than I had ever heard in a lifetime coming from her mouth.

"Do you want to make God first in your life, and accept His Son into your life forever?"

"Yes, I do", she replied, with conviction and without a moment’s hesitation.

For the next 20 minutes I told her how much God loved her. I told her how important it was for her to give and show Jesus’ love now, and how everyone at the nursing home loved her and cared for her.

She held my hand. I prayed. She smiled knowingly. After 15 minutes, I started to doubt even myself what had happened. Once again I said...."Joan, do you want to accept Jesus...."

And a voice quietly said to me, "Jon, she’s accepted me."

I told mother how much I loved her. She told me she loved me. I kissed her and walked out of the room. It was time to continue on to the airport to go home.

On the way out, walking down the hall of the ward, I felt like I was walking a foot above the floor. I couldn’t help myself.. I raised my right hand and waved it over the other patients and the rooms and said, "I heal you all in the name of Jesus Christ."

And 30 minutes later, I was on my way back to California. A two hour flight. I did not stop crying tears of joy during the entire flight.

Mother did no more talking after I left...even to me on my subsequent trips to Denver. She did indeed have Alzheimer’s disease, and her mind, well, was gone. But her Spirit?

Well, I got a letter from brother Alan, a devout atheist, a month or so later. And it told me, and the family members to whom it was copied, how a miracle happened that day.

Mother was a new person. The nursing home staff was still in amazement. Mother, who had been sedated 24 hours a day with Thorazine and Haldol for years just to keep her manageable, had not had medication since the day of my visit, and was a sweet and loving patient. In fact, Alan added, according to the nursing home staff, the WHOLE WARD had miraculously changed from the moment I left. It was now quiet and peaceful.

My brother, the atheist doctor, described what happened to mother as ‘medically impossible’. Because of the event, he then immediately described himself as ‘agnostic’... thinking perhaps maybe there is a God... saying he's no longer an atheist. Hey, it’s a start!

And mother died 2 years later. August 16, 1993. A Born Again, saved Jew, after the entire world, had given up.

Amen.