By Dr. Lilly Wreschner
My father was a professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Zurich. A devout Jew, he brought up his three children to be true Jews. We studied the Hebrew Bible Sunday after Sunday and were taught Jewish history, traditions, feasts and prayers.
An Obsession For Truth
When I entered my teens, my one obsession was to find truth. I studied the two sciences which claim to have truth and life – philosophy and psychology. My heart longed for God with whom my forefathers had such personal contact, but my studies led me to believe that the only honest thing to do was to become an atheist. I came to the conclusion that there is no truth. Truth is relative, I thought. Everyone has a different truth. The profession for which I had studied lost its attraction for me. As a young doctor of psychology, I went back to my hometown of Zurich, now a patient myself, needing help.
I sought advice from professional men; a professor, a doctor and a rabbi. All three failed to help me find the peace my heart craved.
My one obsession
was to find truth.
was to find truth.
She asked her pastor to pray with her for me. For two months they prayed for the unhappy atheist-Jewess. One day she grew bold and declared she knew her pastor could help me. I laughed bitterly. Was she out of her mind to think that the daughter of Professor Wreschner would ever go to a Christian pastor?
My Atheism is Shaken
It seemed that there was a power that drew me to these friends which I did not understand. One day I decided to go to this pastor. This man had joy, peace, serenity, a true psychology – exactly what I needed. He helped me greatly. In the presence of this highly educated and deeply believing pastor, my atheism began to shake. One day, after pouring out all my troubles to him, he folded his hands and prayed. He spoke as to One present in the room. At this, my atheism completely left me – not by reasoning, but by the experience of the presence of God in the room as the pastor prayed. Soon after this I went to his church. With a sense of shock the realization came that this was a place where I was finding what I had sought in vain in the synagogue and at the university. This was a place where I found truth – a Christian church.
Prayer and the preaching of the Word of God led me out of atheism, darkness and despair into the light and joy of fellowship with my Heavenly Father. I learned to call upon God myself when doubts, fears and problems beset me.
It was exactly a year after my friend and her pastor started their prayer covenant for me that I left my hometown, radiant with the new joy of a restored prayer life, and a deep fellowship with the God of my fathers. The mystery of this period is that my ears seemed to be completely closed to any mention of Christ. Before leaving Zurich, I went to thank the pastor who had helped me to believe in God – my Jewish God. His response made me very angry. “Do you think I could have helped you without Christ?” he said.
A Name I Could Not Bear
Though my studies were over, I still had a thesis to write in order to qualify for the diploma to teach underprivileged children. I accepted the offer to teach a young tuberculosis patient in the Swiss mountains. It is a place of breathtaking beauty, Mount Blanc, above the Rhone Valley, where a long chain of snow-covered peaks glows with the setting sun in a sky of transparent turquoise. On Sundays I made my way to a little chapel, hungry for divine life and truth. But it was not the same anymore. A name had hit me. It was the name of Jesus Christ. My ears were opened. Ah! Here it was after all – the thing I had feared. I was being drawn into the camp of those who had been our enemies through the centuries.
Something welled up within me that I had not known to be there before. Perhaps it was the centuries-old rebellion and resistance of the Jewish soul against Jesus.
A name had hit me. It
was the name of Jesus Christ.
was the name of Jesus Christ.
After a few weeks, I sought help from the pastor of the little chapel. “Do you read the New Testament?” he asked. “No,” I burst out, “this is not the book for us Jews.” “I cannot help you then,” he said, “you must read the New Testament.” And with this he left me alone.
Words Like Dynamite
I had lost my only hope. I could not go back nor could I go forward. Going forward meant to read this Book of the Gentiles against which I had feelings similar to those feelings against the name of Jesus. But one day I borrowed my pupil’s Bible and began to read the New Testament. I read from the beginning to the end. It seemed fantastic, unbelievable. It was like a fairy tale. My strong reasoning mind refused to receive any of it, but my soul cried out for God who had hidden His face from me. I read it all over again. Many hours I spent, out alone on my skis or walking over the lonely, snow-covered hills, again and again kneeling down in the snow, crying to God for help and guidance.
Occasionally some of the words seemed to light up with a heavenly lustre and enter into my soul. Like dynamite they worked there, blasting out all my old conceptions about God, Jesus Christ and the New Testament. I became acquainted with the main, outstanding figure of the book: Jesus the Messiah. For the first time in my life I got to know what He really did and said, how He was born, and how He died and rose again.
I spent ten months in that mountain village, and I did not think of much else day and night except these words and truths that I read in the New Testament. Some words would smolder in my soul for weeks and do their work in my inmost being. “I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).
“He that followeth me...” Could it be that this was the key to unlock Heaven? But how could I do such a thing? My father had passed away meanwhile, what would he have said to that? But the answer came through the Word: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me...” (Matthew 10:37).
The Truth is a Person
To every question the answer came from the Book with the absolute authority that it was from God. “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture” (John 10:9). Was it possible that He was indeed the Door and I could find Heaven open for me through Him? Then I came face to face with a verse that simmered in me for weeks. “I am...the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).
Jesus was a person, not a system of thought. I had sought vainly for truth all my life.
Here was the key. Now
I knew that I had solved
the deepest mystery.
I knew that I had solved
the deepest mystery.
Could Jesus lead me back into that deep and blessed fellowship with my Heavenly Father? Then my eyes fell on the words: “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). Pray in the name of Jesus Christ? Pray in that name which I had rejected and resisted so violently? Here was the key. Now I knew that I had solved the deepest mystery.
My Father’s House – At Last
But I shrank back in fear. Until now, I had not done anything that took me out of the Jewish camp. I had read the New Testament, but I had felt that I could draw back at any time I wanted to do so. But, I thought, if I pray in the name of Jesus, I commit myself. I would never dream of praying in the name of a prophet. Who would pray in the name of Jeremiah or Ezekiel? If I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, I reasoned, I acknowledge Him to be more than a prophet – the Son of God. Dare I? For weeks the inner conflict raged.
The day came when I returned home from the snow-fields, entered my little room, locked the door and knelt down to pray, for the first time in my life, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I shall never forget the flood of light and joy and peace that filled not only my whole being, but the entire room. God was there, God the Father. Through His Son, the Messiah, I had reached a haven that I have never left. I had found my way into my Father’s house, never to leave it again. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
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