Sid Roth - Healing Breaks Out When Jill Michaels Sings
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with Jill Michaels. Now what I want to know is, how does a Jewish young lady that is in conservative Judaism, Bat Mitzvahed, all of sudden go into Buddhism, go into astrology. Why, Jill Michaels?
Jill Michaels: Well, when I was 14, my brother was killed in a car accident, and I needed some answers. I needed to know what had happened, where he was, and there were no answers around me except prayers that said we're exalting and magnifying God and we'll find out one day. But I needed to know.
Sid Roth: But as a young child you really loved God.
Jill Michaels: Yes. I remember being a little girl, 3 years old, sitting on bed, looking out my window in the back yard - grew up in Long Island - and singing to Him, thanking Him for being Jewish. I liked the house, I liked the family; just loved Him at that point. I'd just sit there for hours and sing to Him.
Sid Roth: That's highly unusual. But I bet He liked it.
Jill Michaels: No one taught me how to do it. I had remembered being with Him. I remembered that it was just such a choice that He made to make me this little girl, with this family, in this location, and I was just - gratitude was in my heart.
Sid Roth: So why, I mean, you're a nice Jewish girl. Why walk away from our tradition?
Jill Michaels: I didn't feel like I was walking away. I felt like I couldn't find the encounter that I wanted. I remember this very live real encounter as a little girl. Had grown up in synagogue, went to Hebrew school, led the junior congregation, did all of those things. But there were no answers for me inside the religion at that point. I got platitudes and I needed something more. I wanted that power encounter that I had as a little girl again. So I began looking.
Sid Roth: What did you find? What did you find?
Jill Michaels: I found a lot of things that looked like power. I looked in and, as you said, Buddhism and astrology, trying to get closer, trying to touch. I found a spiritual world, but I didn't get any closer to Him through all of this journey, but I did get close to the spiritual world.
Sid Roth: Now you were pretty successful in the business world. Tell me about that.
Jill Michaels: Yeah. I was. I graduated college when I was 20 because I had done high school 4 years in 2 years, and immediately I began running corporations. I did extremely well, and then by the time I was 22, I was running 3 associate corporations and consulting in a 12-city network. So I did very well.
Sid Roth: But that wasn't fulfilling either. Then you went into singing?
Jill Michaels: Yeah. Singing is something I really had done all my life, but I began getting more involved in that from - at that point I had my own consulting business, so it was easy to start doing some singing, and I did jazz singing and those things, in various clubs and worked with a lot of musicians.
Sid Roth: Now your voice teacher was, had some pretty prominent students.
Jill Michaels: Yeah. His name was Carlo Menotti. Tony Bennett studied with him and all the big wigs in Hollywood would come out to work with him. And he had heard my voice through the partner that I had at that point who was the critic for the Daily News in New York, and he began giving me free lessons to work with him.
Sid Roth: It sounds good. And then one day you wanted to check out a music group or a singing group at a church?
Jill Michaels: Well I had never been in a church. But there was an organist at a church up in Harlem in New York, which is in the inner city area, and my business partner had said for me to go up there. He thought maybe we could do some work together. So I went up there during a service.
Sid Roth: That's kind of a strange thing, a Jewish girl from a good Jewish background going into a church in Harlem.
Jill Michaels: Extremely strange. But it was a very fascinating experience for me. Growing up in New York, being in an inner city area was not a big deal to me. But it was incredible. I walked into a church. It was me and about 1,500 - 2,000 African-Americans. It's the headquarters church of a very large denomination, and I felt very much at home. I was very welcomed there.
Sid Roth: How did you like the organ player?
Jill Michaels: He was great. And they had a hundred-voice choir. The music was wonderful; I wasn't put off. There weren't crosses hanging everywhere. There was no crucifix, which was something that really was not appealing to me. Because in all my journey and all my looking for spiritual things the one place I didn't look was Christianity.
Sid Roth: But something that you certainly was the last thing you wanted to happen, in the natural that is - happened, and it's hard for me to even understand it. Explain.
Jill Michaels: Well I had been searching for God through all of these experiences that I had gone through, and I had tastes of it. I had moments where I felt peace, where I felt everything kind of align itself, but they were so fleeting. And I came to this place, and I heard them preach the Gospel; just speak the story of that the Messiah had already come. And I had never heard that before. It was an incredible thing because they did it from my Bible. And all of a sudden, the Messiah that I had been waiting for, I found out, according to them, was here. And that peace that had been so elusive all of those years all of sudden I just knew, that I knew, that I knew that this was right.
Sid Roth: It sounds too simple. You didn't have someone give you a lecture of a hundred reasons why Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. It's just - so what did you do?
Jill Michaels: Well I had that relationship from when I was a little girl. So I began talking to the God that I knew as a little girl. And knowing Him was like knowing someone at a little bit of a distance. And so I began asking, “Is He really your Son?” “Did the Messiah really come?” They did something called an altar call. I had never seen anything like this before. They prayed for people in the front of the building. And instead of just walking up the three rows, which would have been the easiest thing for me to do, I went all the way around the back. Because of all the things that I had tried and touched, you know, in all of my journey, there was nothing that struck terror in my heart like this. This was frightening to me because if this was wrong and if I was making the wrong choice.
Sid Roth: You were going against the God that you loved.
Jill Michaels: Very much so. See, somehow - and I can't explain why - when I did all these other investigations, I didn't feel like I was going against the God that I loved somehow.
Sid Roth: Yet the Torah condemns these things.
Jill Michaels: I didn't know that though.
Sid Roth: Right.
Jill Michaels: You know, there's a lot of Torah knowledge. Isaiah, I know now, condemns the things with astrology and all the rest of that. But I didn't know some of that then. But I was - just a hunger; such a yearning to have that encounter again to find Him, to be able to talk with Him, to have Him a face-to-face encounter. When I was a little girl, my teachers in Hebrew school were from the Israeli army, and I used to make me meet me when I was 8 and 9, and 10 years old on the weekends to study scripture. I just wanted to find what was going on. And that day when I heard this message I knew, that I knew, it was right, even though a part of me was saying, “what are you doing?”
Sid Roth: So did you say a prayer?
Jill Michaels: Well I went all the way in the back and kept asking, “is He your Son?” Came forward, and this gentleman prayed for me.
Sid Roth: Excuse me. Did you get an answer to what you were asking?
Jill Michaels: Not then. But a few minutes later I did. They prayed for me, and this is a congregation where they pray for you; and if you want to, they baptize you right then and there. Now I knew about mikvah, so baptism was not a surprise to me. And they asked me, did I want to be baptized, and I had no idea why I said yes, but I said yes.
Sid Roth: That's outrageous, Jill.
Jill Michaels: It really was.
Sid Roth: What happened after you, I mean, do you get this? A Jewish woman is baptized. Now of course, a mikvah is where Christians got it from. Anything real authentic in Christianity is Jewish. But I mean, it's outrageous. The first time she hears, she accepts Yeshua -Jesus - as her Messiah. She gets water baptized; and wait until you hear what happened. We'll be right back right after this.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth your investigative reporter. Outrageous. This Jewish woman from a good Jewish background goes to a church for the first time in her life, and she not only goes forward and prays for Jesus to become her Messiah, but she gets water baptized! Jill, why did you do that with that good Jewish background?
Jill Michaels: I was so hungry to meet God. I was so hungry to have him. Like you said before, I had professional success. I had all these other things that were going for me, but nothing was meeting that need. That was the thing that was driving me more than anything else. And so it didn't matter. It didn't matter. I knew that as I walked forward that I could possibly lose my family. I knew that this was a tremendous cost and tremendous price. But I just had to because I had to have Him. It was that driving inside of me. So I went forward and they asked me did I want to be baptized, and they gave me to this woman who got me ready.
Sid Roth: Now tell me about that supernatural language.
Jill Michaels: They have rooms set up there where you can change your clothing. There's washers and dryers, and she was taking me up the stairs to this. This was an African-American woman who I found out later, I believe, had a high school education. She was not an ancient scholar. And when she took a few steps up the stairs and she said to me, "When you come up out of the water you might start speaking in tongues". I had absolutely no idea what this woman was talking about. “Tongues”, to me, was what was in my mouth. And I said, “okay, fine. At the same time, I'm walking forward and saying, what am I doing, back and forth, is He really Your Son?” And this is just going on inside of me.
Sid Roth: There's still a tug-of-war going on.
Jill Michaels: Oh, it's an enormous one. It's an enormous tug-of-war, but I'm finding myself walking forward. She took a few steps, and she raised her hands up in the air, and she started speaking; and she started speaking in Hebrew, and she said
Sid Roth: How did she know Hebrew?
Jill Michaels: She didn't know Hebrew.
Sid Roth: What did she say?
Jill Michaels: She said, Deuteronomy 6:4, "Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad". “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” And it blew my mind. It was so absolutely astounding. And it wasn't until later that I realized that my question, “Is He Your Son?”, was being answered in that prayer that she prayed, because it says "He is One", and that's a plural oneness. It was astounding to me. It was absolutely astounding. All the reservations were completely gone.
Sid Roth: And you said that something supernatural happened. It was like spiritual scales came off. Explain.
Jill Michaels: When I came out of the water, one, there was a sense of cleanness inside and out that I had never experienced in my life. I didn't know I wasn't clean until that moment happened. It was an astounding thing. And at that moment the Father, the God that I knew at a distance - but knew and loved - all of a sudden it was just the curtain was taken away. The scales were gone. There was intimacy. There was closeness that was astounding to me, as close as you and I are sitting here, but even more so.
Sid Roth: So the tug—of-war was over?
Jill Michaels: It was completely over at that moment. It was astounding. It was such an awareness of reality, and such a continual awareness of reality. It wasn't a matter of peace for 2 seconds or 3 seconds; it was a continual peace, because I had met Him, and it was just - it was like everything went “click”, like the tumbler went into place.
Sid Roth: Was this what you were searching for as a child, and into the various Buddhism and astrology that you were into?
Jill Michaels: I wanted to touch Him. I wanted that alive, you know, about Abraham talking with Him, and I knew about Moses talking with Him, and you know, He's not - He doesn't make differences. Moses was not any more, you know, than I am or Abraham. I am of that lineage also. I wanted that. I didn't want just religion; I wanted Him; I wanted relationship.
Sid Roth: You said that this woman who had no knowledge of Hebrew quoted Deuteronomy 6:4, which is the “Shema”, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.” There could have not been a better verse. How did she know the Hebrew?
Jill Michaels: She didn't know the Hebrew. This was a gift that's called a “gift of the Spirit”, the Spirit of God. And God says, He wants to tell His Jews about Him, so He does some miraculous things sometimes. And this was a miraculous thing where He allowed this woman who didn't know anything to speak to me in the most powerful way that she possibly could.
Sid Roth: I would like you - right now I'm going to put you on the spot, to sing that Deuteronomy 6:4, that was quoted to you by the Spirit of God. And when you sing this, which is a powerful prayer from the Jewish scriptures, I believe that spiritual scales are going to come off the eyes of Jewish people. Would you do that right now?
Jill Michaels: Sure. “Shema Yisrael: Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad.” “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
Sid Roth: It's so holy, I almost hate to be speaking right now. I believe that what you're experiencing - and someone's neck was just healed. And someone that had a problem - actually in their heel - if you move your foot, you'll see that you have been healed right now; and the spine has just - someone's back has just been healed. Neck is very powerful. People's necks are being healed. All the pain is gone. Something there's like a band over someone's head - a headache; It's gone. That's because of the anointing, or the manifest presence of God. You see, the Torah says that “the anointing” - “the manifest presence of God destroys the yokes of evil”, and that's what's happened. Jill, you have found that when you sing or pray, people have been healed. Tell me about one healing.
Jill Michaels: Well there is a - and even before then I just wanted to say if you feel your heart pounding right now, that's God. That's His spirit drawing and wooing you, and if you feel heat on your body, that's His spirit. There was a woman who had fallen off a stage and shattered her arm, and she had surgery where they do - it looks like scaffolding with steel around the arm. And this hand was several times larger than this one, and it was just this huge steel contraption. And I went - they brought me to her to pray for her, and I heard a series of 3 notes. You know being a musician, I interpret the world musically many times. And I heard a series of 3 notes - certain tones, in a certain rhythm, in a certain sequence - that I knew was to be sung to her. And I felt to just put my hands on the metal and to begin singing.
Sid Roth: Can you just kind of give me, sing what you sang? Is that possible?
Jill Michaels: I'm not sure I remember.
Sid Roth: Give me an idea.
Jill Michaels: There weren't words with it. It was like:
Sid Roth: And what happened?
Jill Michaels: I put my hands on the metal. And this woman played piano, and they weren't sure she'd ever play again. And as I put my hands on the metal, we watched her hand go back to normal size. and all of a sudden, she had motion in this hand that she didn't have before.
Sid Roth: Before your eyes you saw that.
Jill Michaels: Oh yeah, before my very eyes.
Sid Roth: How would you like to see that before your very eyes? If you're hungry, in the day that you seek God with all of your heart, in that day, He will be found. There's an “if” to the best of your ability. We're going to be right back. More, more miracles for you. Don't go away. Yes, healing is a very Jewish thing. Jill, would you agree?
Jill Michaels: Very much so.
Sid Roth: Tell me about another person that was healed.
Jill Michaels: Well there's a gentleman who came to a meeting that I was having one night, and he had a chemical burn on his arm. He was very fair-skinned. He was Hungarian, kind of my coloring, and he had a chemical burn that started on the upper part of his arm and went down to here and wrapped around his arm. His arm looked like black shoe leather. It just happened that day. And around the edge of it, as it wrapped was the very bright red skin.
Sid Roth: It must have been so painful.
Jill Michaels: It was painful. It was ugly looking. The joint was all swollen.
Sid Roth: Oh.
Jill Michaels: And I spoke to a friend who was a practitioner - medical practitioner - and I was told that something like that would need skin grafts; there would be a loss of mobility in the arm. It would be many, many months of any sort of healing that would have to happen.
Sid Roth: Why didn't he just go to the hospital? How come he came to this meeting?
Jill Michaels: Well he knew that healing could be there, and so that's why he came.
Sid Roth: Good reason.
Jill Michaels: So I prayed for him, and I put my hand on his arm, and we prayed that it be completely restored, and that the healing power of Jehovah Rapha, “God the Healer”, happen in his arm. And at the moment it looked like nothing happened; I didn't particularly feel anything, you know? When I sang a few minutes ago, I felt something. That day when I prayed, I didn't feel anything; didn't see any change. But he woke up the next morning, and it peeled off in one piece; and underneath it was fresh, clean, pink skin; no scars; all gone.
Sid Roth: What is the difference? I mean when you were involved in Buddhism and some of these other things you were delving into, what do you see as the difference between knowing God through his son Yeshua, and the Buddhism and the astrology? What's the difference?
Jill Michaels: You're plugged into the power - the source, - the creation of the entire universe. You're not - the others in a sense almost feel like robbery. You're doing things off on the side and trying to grab power and find power, trying to use it yourself, trying to make yourself powerful. That's not the case here. Here, you get plugged right in to God, who is the power source. It's not me that did the healing. It's His power flowing through me because we know each other now, because we have relationship. There is nothing like knowing Him face-to-face. It's that same way when I was a little girl when I knew about Him, but wanted more.
Sid Roth: You know, God told Moses, “I have a special blessing I would like you to bless the people with”. And from the mouth of God, Moses told Aaron this very, very special blessing. It's called the “Aaronic Benediction.” Well, many people call it that. But I'm going to ask Jill to pray - in Hebrew - a blessing, and she's going to sing it - chant it, if you will - a blessing from God. And as she prays this blessing, then I'll pray it over you in English. This is a blessing that God commanded; it's a commanded blessing. And I'm going to believe that you will be saturated with “shalom”. Do you know what “shalom” is? “Shalom”, yes, it means “peace”, and “hello” and “goodbye”. But it's more than that: It's wholeness. You'll be whole in body, soul and spirit. That's why the Messiah came. He said, "I've come to bring you peace”, shalom, “and peace more abundantly". And as Moses instructed Aaron, “…and I lift hands before you”. Why hands? Because King David said, "I lift holy hands to God". My hands are only holy not because of me, but because I believe that Yeshua died - Jesus died for my sins - “…and by His blood I am forgiven”. “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord cause His countenance to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord grant you His shalom”, in the name of the Sar Shalom, the Prince of Peace, Yeshua, Ha’Mashiach Se keinu, Jesus the Messiah our righteousness. And then all God's people said a Hebrew word, "Amen" or amen, which means "so be it". So be it, shalom. So be it, healing. So be it, deliverance. So be it, freedom. So be it, joy. So be it, in Yeshua's name. Amen. So be it! Now Jill, we just got a few minutes left. What's God telling you? What's going on inside of you?
Jill Michaels: I want people to understand that Yeshua is the lamb. When we come together for Passover we have a Passover lamb, but He is the lamb. And if they want, today He will write their name in the lamb's book of life. That this is... It can be an end of the struggle, and an end of the journey, an end of religion, and a beginning of coming to intimacy with Him.
Sid Roth: And I have good news for you. You don't have to be Jewish to believe in the Jewish Messiah. “God so loves the whole world.” Do you remember Jill talking about the big black church? If this big black church didn't have some people that loved God, she wouldn't be sitting here right now. Who knows what she would be, where she would be? Praise God for black Christians. I believe that black Christians have a destiny with Jewish people. It wasn't an accident that God used Afro-Americans to tell you about the Messiah.
Jill Michaels: They led Moses and the children of Israel through the wilderness. Moses' father-in-law was a black man. He was a Midianite, and so they had that role of leading them into the Promised Land.
Sid Roth: And there's a kindred of the slavery and the suffering of Jewish people.
Jill Michaels: That's right.
Sid Roth: And the slavery and the suffering of black people. Say this prayer with me. Repeat it after me. Dear God - come on now, say it with me, because the spoken word is urgent. Dear God, please forgive me for every sin I've ever committed; those that I know about and those that I don't know about. “Against you, and you alone, have I sinned.” And I'm so sorry. I believe that Jesus died in my place, that Jesus is the Passover lamb that takes away the sins - my sins - and by His blood I am forgiven, I am whole, I have peace with God. I have shalom with man. And now that I'm whole, I boldly say that Jesus is my Messiah and Lord. Lord Yeshua - that's His Hebrew name - Lord Yeshua, come inside of me. Take over my life. I make You Lord - Lord over every area of my life. Amen. Now lift up your holy hands to God and tell Him you're thankful. “Thank you, God. Thank you Almighty God”.