Johanna-Ruth Dobschiner was a young Jewish woman who survived the WWII German occupation of the Netherlands by hiding in attics and behind false walls in the homes of the members of the Dutch resistance. It was during the long, tedious hours hidden upstairs in the home of Bastian Johan Ader, the pastor of a small church and leader of an “underground” cell, that Johanna-Ruth took a Bible from his bookshelf and began to read it from cover to cover.
In the Old Testament she read the stories that she had often heard in her Orthodox Jewish home. But then, to her surprise, the Bible had a second part, the New Testament. Starting with the Gospels, she read the amazing story of the man named Jesus! As she read, she imagined that she was one of His disciples following Him throughout Palestine. She was sure that He was the Messiah and could not understand how no one had ever told her about Him!
So heartbroken was she to read about His crucifixion, death, and burial that she closed the Bible and mourned for seven days, as was the Jewish custom. It was sometime later, when she decided to continue reading from where she had left off, that she excitedly discovered that Jesus had risen from the dead! He was the Messiah after all! After reading the stories of the first Christians in the book of Acts, she saw that Christ, through the Holy Spirit, lives on within us, and so she surrendered her heart and life to Jesus.
This year’s Easter issue of Activated explores the meaning of the resurrection. In the article “I Saw, I Touched, I Believed,” Curtis Peter van Gorder depicts the transformation of “Doubting Thomas” to “Thomas, the Apostle” when he touched the resurrected Christ. You will surely enjoy the article by Peter Amsterdam, which is a detailed examination of Christ as the Son of God and long-awaited Messiah.
This Easter let us share Johanna-Ruth’s joy upon discovering the resurrected Christ, and help others come to know Him as well.