Sid: My guest is red hot for the Messiah my producer came running in one day and said “Sid I just heard a CD and this young woman she’s a Jewish believer and she sounds like Barbara Streisand you got to listen to it.” So I have Michelle Gold on the telephone and Michelle I have to ask you what the Rabbis always ask me are both of your parents Jewish?
Michelle: Yes they are born and raised in Brooklyn I’m a little Jewish girl from Brooklyn darling. (Laughing)
Sid: Well that’s too bad if I was a Rabbi and but it’s great because both of my parents are Jewish and I get the Rabbis upset when I tell them that. But from Brooklyn you know Brooklyn’s one of my favorite places I love the Brooklyn accent. And tell me about your religious education you’re both Jewish your both Jewish your both parents are Jewish were you religious at all what did they believe about God.
Michelle: Absolutely, my dad is a Russian decent and my mom her ancestors are from Poland and they came together. She was a lot less religious then he was lets say he was more Shomer Shabbos, which I guess means they lit the candles and they celebrated Shabbat together that Saturday Sabbath time when they’d come together and acknowledge that God created the universe. And you know my mom wasn’t interested in all of that stuff as much but she and him fell in love and I think that they even met at a roller rink somewhere actually and yeah gave birth to me in little old Brooklyn. They believed that God existed but that maybe He was very far away and my dad had some problems with God the Father because of course he had heard stories of the holocaust and just couldn’t put his arms around the fact that you know these people suffered and died and where was God. He didn’t understand the loving side of God and the sovereignty and how evil happens and that’s man’s evil. But he struggled with that so I really had a very secular background however my parents still put me in Yeshiva, that’s full time Hebrew school for a child, and Hebrew school I graduated Hebrew school. And because I was so empty inside my mother used to tell me that when I died I’d go to dust so because I was so empty inside I started to feel really down in my spirit even at 8 years old I cannot believe that an 8 year old has a capacity to even get depressed, but they do! And it was amazing how music was god for us Sid, my mother sings like Ethel Merman, my father like Tony Bennett, my brother sings like the lead singer of Metallica actually. And we used to sit around the piano and sing all of these great songs.
Sid: But your mother had some serious problems we call it today bipolar it used to be called manic-depressive, how did that play out in your life?
Michelle: You know my mother had struggled with manic-depression bipolar disease, chemical imbalance for those that maybe you don’t know it you probably definitely know this but she couldn’t control her behavior so when she was angry she would actually she claimed later on that she would see red. And she would get upset about anything even if you left her out of a conversation, if I took her to the…if she took me to Toys-R-Us and I couldn’t decide on a toy she would see red and her hands would start to shake in front of her almost like a monster.
Sid: How do you handle this as a young child, what affect did it have on you?
Michelle: It was traumatic it was traumatic I think that it was most traumatic is that she would kind of wrestle me to the ground in her anger, but then she would hug me at the same moment and say “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry” because she would kind of come to consciousness and she was madly in love with me. I was like everything to her and she never wanted to hurt me so it was traumatic and so it was confusing. I tried to be god, I tried to keep her together and keep her calm. My friends would come over and she would be angry and maybe throw something and I would have to kind of protect my friends and kind of apologize for her. She only had like one or two really great friends that really understood the illness that stuck by her.
Sid: Now when you were 8 you actually… life was so difficult for this 8 year old that you attempted suicide and you actually heard God speak tell me about that.
Michelle: Yeah between hearing my parents fight because I think that it was touch for my dad he was an overworked school teacher one of the best but he was definitely overworked. And my brother was next store with the heavy metal music kind of getting high and 8 years old I just the tension of my parents arguing and I saw… I had a heart like no other 8 year old I could feel the pain that God would feel in the world I guess. And I just looked out the window and I said “Whoever You are wherever You are I just want to die, I just want to die!”
Sid: And did He respond?
Michelle: Yes, it was so funny I was in my bedroom I had this beautiful green canopy with curtains and a beautiful mirror and pictures of Madonna on the wall. I just thought if I could just become famous maybe I’d be happy one day and all of this would go away. But I looked in the mirror and I kind of looked around the room for the voice of God and He spoke to my heart I knew that it couldn’t have been my words because an 8 year old doesn’t think thought like this. And the thoughts that came to my head were “Michelle Gold you cannot die I have a plan and a purpose for your life you’re going to write songs and you’re going to sing and those songs are going to bring healing to the world!”
Sid: You know it almost like the devil knows there’s a future for certain people and he tries to sabotage them before they get started. In addition to the fighting between your parents and your mothers emotional mental type problems and you being verbally abused you were physically abused, sexually abused as a young child. How did you survive Michelle?
Michelle: I sought happiness through relationships with boys and you know degraded my body, degraded myself and seemed to find pornography and different things around in my friendships and in people’s houses. It’s funny it wasn’t even where my heart was at I kind of lived a double life, my teachers at school they treated me like an angel and they saw the angel in me but I had this double life because I was so empty and confused and traumatized and I was looking for love and I was looking for love and I was looking for power and I was looking for healing and I couldn’t find it.
Sid: And so at 15 you’re going to do some singing and you go to a studio that’s run by your cousin and you go for a walk on the beach with him but you got something you never expected?
Michelle: Yeah but first I went to Israel at 15 to find to find God and instead I just found emptiness and I found some nice dinner conversation that’s about it. In fact I was even date raped while I was in Israel can you believe that it could happen anywhere but…
Sid: How old were you?
Michelle: I was 15 years old actually.
Sid: Oh that is hard to believe.
Michelle: You know it was just upsetting.
Sid: You’re a baby. (Laughing)
Michelle: I know God is merciful because I was not conscious for most of that I was actually drugged someone had drugged me and He was merciful I tell you that much without going into too much detail. But I’ll tell you that I’ve come out way stronger than I’d ever been in my whole life. And man I sometimes felt like I’d punch the devil in the nose it’s like you know it’s because of what I’d been through. And here I was 15 years old and now I went to Florida, Miami Beach thinking I’ll just become the next Madonna and that will handle it all and just be powerful and power will fulfill that need in me you know.
Sid: But tell me what happened when you’re walking on the beach with your cousin?
Michelle: Yeah, it was so funny he looked like Yeshua. I mean the pictures I had seen on the wall of a Jew I always saw pictures of you know Jesus being portrayed with long brown hair and the blue… it’s funny even my cousins Jewish and he looked just like that picture and I didn’t know he was saved. He had a walk with Yeshua he believed in Him as his Messiah. My uncle told him about Yeshua; my uncle was disowned by the entire family we were not allowed to talk to Uncle Ed. It was just so interesting and Steve and I took a break and we took a walk along Miami Beach and he goes you know Michelle did you know Jesus is a Jewish Messiah and all the first believers were Jewish and Matthew, Mark and probably Luke and John were Jewish and it’s the most Jewish thing you could do is believe in your Messiah that you become completed forever. And He could be the Father that you always want and everything you always need. And yeah why don’t us Jews believe in Him I believe in Him right now and receive Him right now?
Sid: How could you do it so quickly? How did you do that Michelle?
Michelle: (Laughing) You know I believe that seeds were planted in my life from when I was very young I can look back. I can remember a vision of Yeshua in the sky in the clouds laying in the back seat of my car going to a trip to I believe it was some Jewish camp Upstate New York. And I remember it was like at about 8 or 10 years old looking up and seeing a vision of Yeshua like in the sky! I know it sounds insane but I saw Him seating on a swing and just like a beautiful Abba, a beautiful Daddy, just waiting for me. And I also had a girl at camp that used to sit with me on a rock outside of camp underneath the beautiful trees and tell me “You know that Jesus is the Messiah and He’s coming back one day.” She freaked me out with all of these stories about the rapture I had no idea about what she was talking about.
Sid: (Laughing) So Michelle you immediately its right and you accept Yeshua you go home you keep it hidden for a little while but then you tell your parents. What happened?
Michelle: (Laughing) Oh my goodness. My parents they actually tried to disown me when they found out that I believed in Yeshua. I was pretty shocked because my mom is extremely liberal and always told me they would be behind me no matter what. And I think that she was kinds wanting to be cool with it because she saw the change in me but my dad immediately disowned me. I was able to live in my house but there was no connection any longer with my dad and I was completely and emotionally cut off. I had family members calling telling me that they’d grieve for me as if I were dead. And my dad sent me to a programmer with a Lubavitch Hasidim in Brooklyn to see if he could change my mind.
Sid: Okay was he successful? What did he say to you? You know these deprogrammers are some professionals they spend their whole life studying how to prove Jesus is not the Messiah just in case a Michelle comes along. So what did they say to you I’m curious?
Michelle: So my Dad sent me to a deprogrammer thinking that maybe I was brain washed and the deprogrammer was a rabbi in the Lubavitch community and actually it didn’t… part of it didn’t work because it was a rabbi that first tried to set me up with a good looking guy and I ended up bringing the guy to Yeshua actually and get him to agree. But then the rabbi sat me in his room and he’s like Michelle if Yeshua is the Messiah don’t you think I would know I’m a Rabbi I’ve got all of these books here. And I said “No, I don’t think you’d know because these books are not going to tell you to read the New Covenant you need to.
Sid: You know this must be a cop out by these Rabbis because my Rabbi said “Sid you see all of these books behind me when you’ve read them all then you can tell me Jesus is the Messiah.” So I had the same thing. Okay the rabbi got nowhere with you because of the Lubavitch movement and they try to win Jewish people by doing nice things. And a woman from that organization she was beautiful she did have an effect on you what happened?
Michelle: Absolutely at that point I met this beautiful woman at the Lubavitch group and as you know they’re very very charismatic people and she talked me out of my faith somehow by telling me that “If Yeshua was really the Messiah that peace would have come to the entire earth.” Well at that point I wasn’t grounded in my faith to know that well Yeshua had to come to atone for our sins first. So I believed unfortunately that was right around Yom Kippur. So I spent that day repenting for maybe believing in the wrong thing and I just wanted to please God and Yeshua was the Messiah I wanted to know but I was so confused and I threw the bread into the water as a symbol of leaving my sins before the Lord.
Sid: And you tried the Bahai faith and you’re still searching, but then you win the Lena Horn Scholarship and you go to the presidios Manhattan School of Music you’re 17 you move out of your home. You start relationships and you forgot everything about Jesus, about knowing God, anything about God you’re focusing on your singing. As a matter of fact I want them to hear a little bit about your singing. Tell me what the song “Shalom” is about.
Michelle: Well when I wrote “Shalom” it was right after 9/11 actually when the Twin Towers fell in New York City. I was living in Nashville, Tennessee soon after that and had been missing the fire of God that I had once had so strongly because it was so peaceful there in Nashville. And I cried out to the Lord “Lord bring my passion back let not disaster have to happen again before I care enough to pray and intercede for Your people You Jewish people.” And that song was birthed out of that prayer.
Sid: Let’s hear a section from that. (15.36.2)
Michelle: Excerpt of “Shalom.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth