Sid Roth - People Are Healed When He Plays His Violin
Sid Roth: Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter with Maurice Sklar. He started out at age four playing the violin. It looks like a who's who. He was really a child prodigy. He was selected by musical America as one of the top young ten artists of the year in 1990. He went to julliard. He graduated from curtis. These are world class places to train. He's been a guest soloist at so many different symphony orchestras throughout America. It's too many for me to list. But Maurice, as a child prodigy. How old were you when you had your first violin in your hand?
Maurice Sklar: I was four when I started playing.
Sid Roth: Was it a violin as big as a regular one?
Maurice Sklar: It was about an eight size instrument, pretty small.
Sid Roth: And did you rebel? Did you like it? What's a four-year-old doing with a violin?
Maurice Sklar: Well my father is a cellist and my stepmother played violin the Atlanta symphony. And they started me on the violin partly because they thought I had a good ear, you know, and I could listen well, and they just wanted me to play. And I both loved and hated the violin. I had a very ambivalent relationship to it.
Sid Roth: Well I could understand the love. Why did you hate it?
Maurice Sklar: Well when I began to play and I caught on, my father, who wanted to be a professional cellist, he didn't make it professionally as a cellist. He's an attorney, but he still plays cello in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. But he really, when he saw that I had a great gift on the violin he really wanted me to do everything that he never got a chance to do.
Sid Roth: A lot of parents are that way.
Maurice Sklar: Yeah. And so he always say he was extremely encouraging to me. He really wanted me to play.
Sid Roth: How many hours a day did you practice?
Maurice Sklar: I'd say definitely two, and then as I got into it later after about 12, 11 or 12, three and four hours a day, sometimes five.
Sid Roth: Five hours a day. That's got to be tough on a young kid.
Maurice Sklar: Well it's what it takes to learn the violin, but it's not easy on a kid, no.
Sid Roth: How much of a task master was your dad?
Maurice Sklar: Well he just wanted me to do this so much and i, my mom, my real mom and he split up when I was two, and so I stayed with my father, and the combination of some of these things as a very young person put a lot of instability in my life. Plus I could talk to you when I was kid kind of like I do now, and so I didn't really have a normal childhood. So all of that together, when I got into my teenage years and then beyond it really created a lot of pressure for me.
Sid Roth: Tell me your worst moment. You said pressure. Your worst moment.
Maurice Sklar: The worst moment I could think of, I was at my last year at julliard. It was in 1986. I was 23. I was in such pain emotionally, I was on, I went to the George Washington bridge in New York City to jump off. And I was, I almost did jump off except I couldn't get my feet to move. But I got very close and was about ready to jump off. That's probably the worst moment.
Sid Roth: You said you were in such pain. Why were you in such pain? What was really going on, Maurice?
Maurice Sklar: Well for years, my dad would tell me, you know, going through school, you're different, you're an artist, you don't really fit in, but when you make it then you're going to be happy and you'll find yourself, and you'll be with other musicians that are like you. And the music world was painted to me as a very, almost a fairy tale place. And when I finally realized that I had made it, whatever that meant, I was playing concerts. I was, but I was lonely and unhappy, and I felt like I lost myself.
Sid Roth: When you say you made it and you said you were lonely and unhappy, did it tilt? I don't understand. Explain.
Maurice Sklar: Well that was one of the reasons. I didn't either, except I think it had to do with there was a spiritual component to it in addition to just working so hard for something that I thought I would find where I fit in the world and realizing that I did not, I could not find that. I did not fit in this world. And that's why I said, well I don't want to live in this world anymore then. So I was suicidal for a year almost, after that.
Sid Roth: What brought you out of this?
Maurice Sklar: Well I had met a man when I was a student at curtis that was a Christian man and he knew the Bible really well. I had, when I was 13 years old I had had an experience where I had received Jesus, received Jesus as Messiah and my Lord, but I did not have any good teaching from the Bible and I had no church environment. I was just raised, you know, real secular music was really everything to me.
Sid Roth: Would you have said, even though you were a believer in Jesus, that music was your God?
Maurice Sklar: Yes. Yes. And I wanted to please my dad so much, too. Yes, I loved the arts and music, and classical music, and I had worked so hard, and I was just exhausted, too. I had just pushed for years and years, and I was just at a point where I just broke down. But the Lord healed me. I, over time, and I just surrendered everything to him. And he told me one time, he said, "Son, you can entertain people for an evening, but if you'll go and minister and perform me, I'll do more than just entertain people for an evening, I will change lives forever". He said, "Which do you want"? And I said, well I just had surrendered everything. You know, my earthly father, I wanted to please him so much and I realized that vision was not what my Heavenly Father had for me. The Heavenly Father had a vision for me to play the violin, but it was without all the pressure of this world system.
Sid Roth: Are you there now?
Maurice Sklar: Yeah.
Sid Roth: You are there now.
Maurice Sklar: Yeah.
Sid Roth: In a moment, when we come back, you're going to see something. You're going to see a man that was suicidal, a man that had so much depression he didn't even want to live. I believe we're talking to people right now. I'm talking to someone right now. You are suicidal. You see no purpose to live and you're going to see something when we come back that you're going to find hard to believe, of the change in Maurice sklar. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with world class violinist, who was a child prodigy, Maurice Sklar. He had it made. I mean, he was the soloist at various symphonies throughout America. He was noted, I mean, I've got articles and reviews. He had it all. He had what he wanted and he was depressed, suicidal. Some people say, if I can only get it, I'd be so happy. Well he got it and he wasn't happy. Well he had a revolutionary change in himself that he had an encounter with the living God, and to see how he went from suicidal depression to, not natural, but supernatural joy. We're going to have a clip in just a moment. But Maurice said, and I felt just before we came back, that God is going to heal so many people when you hear this music, and even before, even now. For instance, right now there is someone that is viewing us whose neck has just been healed. Maurice, what is God telling you?
Maurice Sklar: Well you know, the Bible talks about musicians that played for the Lord, that God would heal people as they were playing, like Saul playing for David and the distressing spirit would be, he would be calm. And there's different kinds of healing. But I see a lot of physical miracles in a lot of the meetings and services that I do, concerts that I play. And I really believe that the Lord is, as I play, as I play during this clip and later on, God is going to heal a lot of people with cancer, problems. There is someone with colon cancer, God is healing you right now. See, because healing comes from God. He is the healer. There is someone with terrible migraine headaches. You've had them for years. The Lord is going to heal you as you listen. Music can carry a tremendous healing flow. I sense that just different cancers and problems, incurable things.
Sid Roth: And not only that, someone's back has just been healed. Now get ready to see, not natural joy, but supernatural joy in the "Jewish medley".
Maurice Sklar: Hallelujah! Great is the army of the Lord that carries out his word!
Sid Roth: I don't know about you, but I think about that depressed concert violinist, that world class violinist that was so depressed he wanted to jump off the George Washington bridge, and then to see him dancing and playing the violin. Maurice, that wasn't an act. That was real stuff.
Maurice Sklar: It's real. You know, there's something supernatural about the joy of the Lord.
Sid Roth: But that was also the "Jewish medley". You are a Jewish believer in Jesus. What does it feel like doing a Jewish medley?
Maurice Sklar: Oh I love the Jewish people. I am, I guess I am Jewish and I just, I love playing it. There is a release of the joy of the Lord, which is, the joy is different than happiness. It's something that God gives us. It's something supernatural, as your program is called.
Sid Roth: Are many people set free from suicide or depression when they hear your music?
Maurice Sklar: Yes, I've had many reports of both emotional healings, mental healings.
Sid Roth: Tell me about one.
Maurice Sklar: Well I'm thinking of, actually it was a Jewish man, a young man, teenager who was suicidal and had some bi-polar problems with depression. And he just put my tape on in his room, and over a period of several weeks, maybe a couple of months or so, it completely left his life. Very often it can be from spiritual causes, you know. The Bible talks a lot about evil spirits that bring on depression and these type of things. And music can carry either the atmosphere of heaven or the atmosphere of hell.
Sid Roth: Well I'm going to tell you something, when we come back you're going to have flooded into your home as Maurice plays on his violin, right before us, the atmosphere of heaven. Be right back.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth back again with Maurice Sklar. Do you remember Paul and Silas, suddenly wonderful happened? I'm saying to you, suddenly something wonderful is going to happen to you when supernaturally the music that Maurice Sklar is going to play right now, it's a song that I selected because I believe God the Creator of the universe selected this for you. You see, God wants you to behold the Messiah. We shall behold. Maurice.
Sid Roth: Someone's head has just been healed, the whole head area. Someone's back and someone's ear has just been healed in Yeshua's name.
Sid Roth: Maurice Sklar, while he was playing I felt your pain. I felt your sadness. I felt your hurts. More important than me feeling it, God felt your pain. God felt your sadness. God felt your hurts. There is hope because Maurice wasn't even going to bring his violin, but he brought it because God loved you so much, he knew that it was going to touch your spirit. Literally that music just combined with your spirit and his giving you tikvah, that's a Hebrew word for hope, where you were hopeless, just supernaturally there is hope inside of you. And the only hope is in the Messiah of Israel, Yeshua, Jesus, not a religion, not a tradition, but in Yeshua. Believe that he died for your sins. Tell God you're sorry. Just be a mensch, a human. Tell him, "I'm sorry, God, I've sinned again you. Please forgive me and help me change. I believe Yeshua, Jesus died for my sins and by his blood I'm healed. I've made Yeshua my Lord. Lord, come inside of me". Do that. Say it right now, "come inside of me". And he's going to come, and where you had no hope, you have hope now. You don't have hurts. He took it for you. You don't have it anymore. It's on him. It was on his back. He carried it away for you. He does love you. God loves you. He knows your name. He knows your name. That's why he had you here.