As a teenager growing up on Long Island, Michael Brown’s insatiable appetite for illicit drugs earned him the nicknames “Iron Man” and “Drug Bear.” By the age of fifteen, the aspiring rock and roll drummer was shooting heroin and had burglarized some homes and even a doctor’s office for amusement-an incongruous lifestyle for the son of the senior lawyer of the New York Supreme Court.

He grew up in a Jewish family but was uninterested in spiritual matters. When he was bar mitzvahed at the age of thirteen, he was given a Hebrew passage to memorize-but nobody ever translated it for him, and he never bothered to ask anyone what the words meant. For him, it was a meaningless ritual.

In 1971 the two other members of his band began attending a local church in pursuit of two girls related to the pastor. Little by little, they began to be influenced by the gospel. Upset at the changes in their lives, Brown decided to visit the church in an effort to extricate them. One of the girls, aware of his reputation, wrote in her diary that night: “Anti-Christ comes to church.”

Unexpectedly, in the months that followed, Brown discovered a new emotion: a gnawing sense of regret and conviction over his rebellious and drug-saturated behavior. He ended up in many discussions with Christians about spirituality. On November 12, 1971, when the pastor asked if anyone wanted to receive Jesus as their Savior, Brown walked the aisle-not because he really wanted to become a Christian, but so that he could give the congregation a thrill. After all, he was sure they regarded him as the worst of sinners.

Then something even more unexpected happened: as he repeated the words of the pastor in a prayer of repentance and faith, he found himself suddenly believing the message of Christ. “It was like a light went on,” he said. Instantly, he believed Jesus had died for his sins and had risen from the dead. “I knew it was real,” Brown said. “Now the challenge was: what was I going to do with it-because I wasn’t ready to change my lifestyle:” It wasn’t until five weeks later that he permanently abandoned drugs and yielded his life to Jesus.

His father liked the subsequent reform of Brown’s behavior, but he didn’t like the Jesus part. He brought his son to talk to the local rabbi, who eventually took him to a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. None of them, however, was able to dislodge his belief, now confirmed by his own deep study, that Jesus is the Messiah of Israel.

Strobel, Lee. The Case for the Real Jesus. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007, p. 193-194.