Sid Roth - Supernatural Freedom from Depression and Mental Illness with Lynda Stein and Richard Davis
Sid Roth:Hello. I'm Sid Roth your investigative reporter. I'm here with a Jewish woman, Linda Stein. I mean, it's almost outrageous. She's got everything going for her, a college degree. She's young, she's pretty and she's depressed, suicidal. Why, Linda?
Linda Stein:Well I went to college, got my Bachelor's in theatre. I wanted to be an actress. From the time I was 13 I wanted to be an actress. And finished college and went out to do the acting, and my parents really pushed for me to get more education because they didn't feel as though it was appropriate. And I wanted to please them, and so I went in the direction that they wanted me to. I went back for, instead of a Master's degree in theater I went and got an A.A. in business computers. And in that stumbling around, in that timeframe I went to Los Angeles for a while to pursue acting, got mono, came home.
Sid Roth:How awful.
Linda Stein:Came home, went to school, got my A.A., and then I started having problems with depression, and I wasn't happy because I was not doing what I felt like I wanted to, and I wanted to make my parents happy. And so I got very depressed and suicidal. And I was at the University of Iowa, I remember the day, and I was staring at the water. It was probably about 30 degrees out and who knows what wind chill, and I was looking at the water of a river, and it was tumbling and going in different directions. And I stared down and I wondered if I jumped in if anyone would care. And at that point I began to see that I needed to get help. And so I went home, asked my parents, can I have, I need some help, I'm really messed up. And so they sent me to this psychologist, and we got into therapy.
Sid Roth:Did he help?
Linda Stein:Well in one respect, he tried in the beginning. He tried and then as we got into the relationship he started to cross over the boundaries of patient-doctor relationship, and started making suggestions of us proving some of the theories that he was giving by going out and doing things. And at that point in my life I was so down. There was nothing, I didn't care any more. My morals were gone. My feelings of boundaries were gone. I just wanted to be healed. I was desperate for love. I was desperate for somebody to tell me that what I and who I was, was okay and that my future was going to happen, and to have hope and peace, and joy, and I just, I would have done anything. I was selling my soul to the devil basically because I was ready for that much. And so in the confines of that relationship as we crossed the boundaries and we started going out, we'd go out jogging and we'd do different things. I knew he was married. I knew everything, but I was getting attention and I was getting structured attention, and I felt as though I needed that. So I was trying to help myself, and in that effort a relationship began, a sexual relationship began with that, and it was a bittersweet experience. On the sweet side, I was getting attention, and on the bitter side it wasn't the right attention.
Sid Roth:So Yom Kippur comes up. You go to the synagogue.
Linda Stein:That's right.
Sid Roth:What were you looking for?
Linda Stein:I decided I quickly began to see that that relationship wasn't working. I started to see him enjoy the fact that he was having this relationship with me and that it was sin, and I didn't know anything about sin. I mean, I just knew right and wrong, go to the synagogue, and on Yom Kippur I decided I'm going to find out what atonement for sins are and I am going to fast on this day. And on that day I fasted, and I fasted, and I said, God, I'm going to take the words of this prayer book and I'm going to make these words mean something to me. And I read them. I didn't know what they meant. I remember reading a little bit of Isaiah, although Isaiah is not in there. But I tried to make them work. And at the end of the service that day I was walking outside of the synagogue and I saw this doctor with another woman that wasn't his wife, and the Holy Spirit came over me, and it was like I knew that what we were doing had to stop. It was wrong. It was totally wrong. And so I began to terminate the relationship and I started my journey towards the Lord. God put me in play after play, after play. But the first play he put me in, as I was terminating the relationship with the doctor, the first play he put me in was “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” And the man that was Joseph, that played Joseph, and I was a narrator in the play, was a born again Christian who had never done anything outside of the church. And he began to witness to me, and share the Lord with me. He didn't know anything about my past. He didn't about the doctor. He didn't know about anything. He just started sharing the Lord. And eight months later, and I debated, and I fought, and I kicked and I screamed, and I objected to everything about Christianity. I got on my knees and I said, "Jesus, I'm a Jew. I'm not supposed to believe in you. Everything I've been taught says that you don't exist. But if you're real, come into my life". And at that point, I felt this real tense time and then I sensed like somebody bopped me on the head just like that. I sensed the Holy Spirit just enter into my head and this peace came all over me, and I was saved. And so I called my friend.
Sid Roth:I have to ask you a question. According to my notes, you were not only depressed, you were taking Lithium.
Linda Stein:Oh yeah.
Sid Roth:What happened to the Lithium?
Linda Stein:Well I started taking myself off of Lithium. After I got saved I started taking myself off of Lithium. And I was diagnosed as a manic-depressive in that timeframe and I thought, you know what, I don't need this. And so I slowly started decreasing the amount of my medication on my own and eventually I'm not manic. I'm not manic at all.
Sid Roth:I'll tell you what. She's not only not manic, not depressed, you've got some joy.
Linda Stein:I have.
Sid Roth:You really have joy.
Linda Stein:Oh yeah.
Sid Roth:Your face is beaming. How long ago did this happen?
Linda Stein:It happened about 14 years ago.
Sid Roth:Do you believe as much today as you did 14 years ago?
Linda Stein:Every ounce of it and more. I'm a different person and not just because I've gotten older, because a lot of people would say, oh well, you know, you grow.
Sid Roth:You get over it.
Linda Stein:Yeah. You just grow out of it. It was a stage. Absolutely not. I was determined that I was going to get on the other side of that depression, and what I did is I just worked through all the depression with me and God, and God's people who he brought around me, and the Bible. And I'm not a manic-depressive.
Sid Roth:Linda, listen, we're having another Jewish man on when we come back. And this particular Jewish man was so depressed he became a hermit, locked himself in his apartment for six months with nothing to eat or drink. What a miracle. Don't go away.
Sid Roth:It's unbelievable. I've got another Jewish person here that had every reason to be happy, to be up. I mean, a successful graphic artist, a playwright, an author, everything to live for. But he found himself, because he had a health problem, he started fasting. He felt that would help. He was involved in the new age and had learned these techniques. And but in your wildest imagination, Joel, did you think that you would be in that room for six months without food and water?
Joel:No, never thought about that.
Sid Roth:Tell me what it was like.
Joel:It felt like hell, although I know there's a literal hell, but it felt like hell, terribly lonely. And I didn't know what was happening to me. I'd be laying on my bed for weeks and weeks at a time, actually for over six months.
Sid Roth:Didn't someone call you?
Joel:Some of my clients called me, but I never returned their calls. My dad called me to try and get in touch with me. After a few months, they didn't hear from me and they were concerned, and I didn't return their calls.
Sid Roth:Now you realize that you had told me you had a little bit of water. But it's, I talked with the doctor about your condition, by the way, because I wanted to check it up.
Joel:Right.
Sid Roth:And this doctor told me in medical history, in 1935, there was a deranged man that literally went for years by just eating grass. And he said, but that was the closest he knew, and in his opinion, the only way you could be sustained is if you had a miracle.
Joel:Well I believe that's what happened to me.
Sid Roth:So tell me about that period of time in your life.
Joel:During the six months?
Sid Roth:Yes.
Joel:I was fasting and I lost control. I was in the new age for about 13 years and there were all these things like the I Ching, Tarot, Yoga and meditation. And I had a physical problem, and I decided to fast. I was fasting for a few weeks. I was going to do a shut-away, and I lost control. And I didn't get up out of bed. And during that period of time, at first I bolted the door. I remember that. And then for six months I didn't have anything to drink or eat except about that much water and two little scrawny boiled carrots. And I didn't know why or how I survived, but after six months, the same way I put myself in my apartment, all of a sudden it changed and I was out.
Sid Roth:But wait. Let's talk about the six months for a little bit. For instance, he told me that he just happened, and this is kind of unusual as a Jewish man, he just happened to be listening to the radio the whole time, and it just happened to be on a religious channel.
Joel:Right.
Sid Roth:Tell me about that.
Joel:Before I bolted myself away in my apartment, I met this woman around the corner and she would share her love of God with me, and she told me about this station that was playing in New Jersey, and for some reason I wanted to listen to it. I didn't even have a radio that was equipped with an AM station. And I borrowed this old grey radio from someone in the building because I didn't have a radio, and I just turned this channel on. So the only company that I had in six months were these people that were preaching to me and talking, and sharing their love of God over the air, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. That's the only thing.
Sid Roth:Did you like it?
Joel:I heard them mentioning God's name and talking about his son, and I remember a number of times that if they didn't mention his son's name within about an hour I got really anxious, like even fearful because they weren't talking and saying his name. And when they would say his name, all of a sudden I'd be able to take a deep breath and rest back in bed. And something about his name, it was almost like, it was health. I felt the health. I mean, it was just a feeling.
Sid Roth:But many Jewish people, because of anti-Semitism, we hear the name Jesus.
Joel:Right.
Sid Roth:We don't have an affectionate feeling.
Joel:Right.
Sid Roth:How come? This is strange.
Joel:I've had the same experience before I had that experience in my apartment, is that people would say the name Jesus, or they'd want me to go to church, and being brought up Jewish and Bar Mitzvahed, and confirmed, we would never want to go to church or be around those other people, because I didn't know why, but that's what we were told and that's how were taught, and you get a habit of doing what you're taught. You're a product of your environment, I guess. And I really don't know. I think it's supernatural. I think it's supernatural. I was into Yoga. I meditated. I studied Taoism; read Confucius. I had over 80 books. I had bits and pieces of literature. My parents didn't get upset about it. Other people didn't get about it. When I first heard about Jesus they got crazy.
Sid Roth:What stopped? What stopped that six months? You said you just had, in six months, you just, you like, you're, tell me. You just go up and you were normal?
Joel:Well my beard had grown and I didn't take a shower for six months.
Sid Roth:Oh.
Joel:I know. I was pretty ratty. And my hair had grown into a ponytail. And what happened was at the end of six months my brother and an attorney, and the janitor came to the front door, and I heard it. It was like someone had this like 12-pound sledge hammer and they were smashing into my door. So I went up and by now I didn't realize at the time, but I was having a nervous breakdown. And I kind of tip-toed to the front door, and kind of put my ear up there to who's over there. And I'm hearing them, they're talking about taking the door off the hinges. And something snapped inside of me or clicked, and then what I did is I unbolted the door, opened it and stood there as if they were guests invited for afternoon tea. And all of them, all three of them turned as if they were white as ghosts. And here I was I had lost 50 pounds. I was had my beard, and a yiddish word schissel, it was like a schissel of a beard. and my hair was in a ponytail, and they wanted to put me in the hospital. And thank God. I just went to Florida to see my folks for a couple of weeks. But that's how I opened the door. And I returned to New York and for the next nine years or so I returned to the graphic arts because I had all six months of those bills to pay.
Sid Roth:And so it was like, this is what's just phenomenal to me. Here's six months. You're like a vegetable. You're having nervous breakdown. You're being, would you say you were sustained by the words that were coming out of that religious station?
Joel:I believe so, yes.
Sid Roth:And then you just like instantly snap out of it. But you had some problems afterwards and you went through what was called deliverance. Explain that.
Joel:Well over the next, I guess, I received the Lord during that time. I said yes to Jesus and that changed my life, not in a religious way, but in a spiritual way. And what I was looking for in new age I found in him. And for the next 17 years, in the beginning of that, I had deliverance. I didn't realize that when you dabble with the new age, you can possibly become possess by demons. I remember one time for a period.
Sid Roth:Excuse me. Hold that thought. You can be possessed by demons? I want to continue that thought when we come back. Don't go away.
Sid Roth:Hello, Sid Roth. Before we continue where we left off with Richard Davis, I want to find out who our guest is going to be next week. Let's go to the control room. Janie, who's on?
Janie:Sid, you're going to be interviewing a Jewish chiropractor who has found parts of the New Testament in code in the Old Testament. So he's found the Christian Bible, as some people say it, in the Jewish Scriptures in code. And also in his practice, people are supernaturally healed. There was one girl in a coma and half of her body was paralyzed, and she was totally healed.
Sid Roth:I'm really looking forward to that. Did you hear what Janie said? She said that in code they had found parts of the New Testament, the Christian Bible, in the Jewish Scriptures. Well I'm here with Joel Davis, and Joel, I'm just kind of like, what you went through, I mean, I know that the Bible says all things are possible, but you are stretching the faith of even me, to be quite candid with you. But you went through something called deliverance. And a lot of our viewers don't know much about that. Explain it.
Joel:Well remember “The Exorcist,” it was a movie years ago?
Sid Roth:Yes.
Joel:I remember when I heard about that and heard the coming attractions about that, and watched them, I was really scared. It bothered me and I turned it off because I didn't want to think about that. And while I was going through this kind of before, during and after, I realized that this is real, and when you play around with God, I was in the new age, and not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, playing around with fire.
Sid Roth:What is the difference? I mean, since you've been in both arenas, you've been in the arena of the demonic, new age and the arena of God. What is the difference?
Joel:A real, a knowing, a true peace. When I was in the new age, there was a peace that I only now after having coming out of it, it's like a false peace. The people weren't really in peace and I wasn't really in peace. Everybody was really searching, but no one would ever find anything. And I never really saw what the spiritual discipline that they were part of ever affect their lives. They never seemed to becoming nicer and more joyful, and I found that in my Messiah, that you do become more joyful, and there's nothing to be frightened of, and fear is, I think it's a deception and that all people have. And you have to learn it's only by God's mercy that he even shows us the truth, and then his mercy that we hear it.
Sid Roth:When you were going through your deliverance, for someone that's never seen anything like that before.
Joel:Right.
Sid Roth:But explain it just a little bit.
Joel:There was a woman, a friend of mine who had also accepted the Lord years before and we were in my apartment, and over a period in my apartment, and another apartment, four days and 23 hours, things were, I guess, pulled out of me. One day my body was swept back and forth in my apartment for nine straight hours. Try pushing your body across the floor for half an hour and you'd run out of energy, and that happened for nine hours. That's supernatural to me.
Sid Roth:You seem to be very calm. You seem to be at peace with yourself, at peace with God, and there are many that are watching right now that are not at peace with themselves. They're not at peace with God. They're very worried, fearful. As a matter of fact, you have such tremendous fears right now. There is hope. Richard, I want you to talk to some of these people and tell them.
Joel:I think it's really hard for people to admit that they're lonely and depressed, even suicidal, disgruntled that the things that they're doing, it's hard to come to grips with their life. The truth is very frightening, but there's a verse in the Bible that says that the truth will set you free, but you have to want to be free. And there's a poem that I wrote that I showed you in a book last night, it's called, “The Red Cotton Towel” and it's people love their own pain because it's comfortable and it's secure. And to go into new is more scary than to stay, for them to get out of their pain, and pain is a comfortable security blanket. But because I was able to accept the Lord, he was able to help me get out of the pain to see the truth and he set me free, and that's what happened. And that's why the joy that God truly gives you, no one can take away. I never saw that in the new age. You're not lonely increasingly, you're not depressed, and also God shows you how to stay that way. I never saw that in the new age. It never helped me that way.
Sid Roth:Is your pain your friend? Are you ready to be free? I tell you, I expose the new age and your pain is not your friend. I say there is a real peace. The word in Hebrew is “shalom.” It means a completeness. There is completeness for you. I want to pray for you right now. If you will believe that God is going to touch you right now, I know he will. First, out loud, say, God, I'm sorry for everything I have done to offend you, for my sins. I hurt. I need help. I believe that Jesus died for my sins and by his blood I am free. I make you, Jesus, my Lord and my Messiah. Lord Jesus, come inside of me. Take over my life. I make you Lord over my life in Jesus' name. And no I'm not speaking to you, I'm speaking to the spirit that's attached to you, that has no rights. In the name of Jesus, I bind you spirit of pain and grief, and hurt, betrayal. I bind you in Jesus' name. I command you off of these people. I break every curse over their life up to four generations in Jesus' name. And I thank, you know, people are being healed right now. It's very important for you to forgive anyone that has ever hurt you. They don't deserve it. But you and I didn't deserve it either. Choose. It's a choice, it's not a feeling. Choose to forgive everyone that has ever hurt you in any area of your life. If you'll do that right now God will set you free. I pray that you would be filled. And grief, I command you to leave in Jesus' name. I command you to leave in Jesus' name. I plead the precious blood of my Messiah all around you and I speak such shalom, such peace, such peace into you, peace that you've never experienced before, because it's the spirit of God. It's the peace of God. I pray Father God that you put hope in the hopeless right now. I can feel the peace of God going deeper and deeper into the very fiber of your being into your very bones. You're free. And as Richard said, you'll know the truth. The truth will set you free. The truth set you free, Richard.