Called to Controversy (24 page)

Moishe's initial resistance to the move west had not been unusual. He later conceded, “That has almost always been the case for me with God's will. I was always pointed someplace else, moving ahead, doing what I thought I was supposed to do. I wasn't seeking; I wasn't looking. It seems as though God has always come to me as an interruption.” In fact, he often found that what he'd taken to be an unwelcome change of plans was actually an answer to his prayers for God's leading, as in this move to California.

The stop in Denver was a high point. But as happy and hospitable as Moishe's family was about the visit, there was an underlying tension. The conditions of their reconciliation caused Moishe to feel guilty; he was not allowed to discuss religion. His whole life was dedicated to telling others about the amazing relationship with God that was possible through Jesus; it seemed wrong to keep silent about that relationship when he was with the people he cared for most. Yet he felt he had no choice. He'd always hoped, and in fact had been led to believe by some well-meaning Christians, that eventually his family would see the positive changes in him and begin to ask about God. They never did. That was painful for Moishe—and it also made it awkward for him to discuss his other reason for being in Denver.

Pastor MacDonald and the elders of Trinity Baptist Church were happy to fulfill their promise concerning Moishe's ordination. The church had called an ordination council of about twenty-four church leaders and elders before whom Moishe presented himself to be questioned on his Bible knowledge, theology, and doctrine. The council found Moishe's responses satisfactory, and he was invited to give his testimony the following Sunday night, after which he was to be ordained as a Conservative Baptist minister.
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It was with a sense of accomplishment and gratitude that Moishe received his ordination. He valued the connection to the Conservative Baptist Association throughout his life.

Moishe explained to his father that he had been qualified to be ordained—and though he realized it was highly unlikely that Ben would attend the service, he had invited him anyway. Moishe recalled, “My dad looked at me and said, ‘I guess if I were a Christian, I'd be very proud of you. But I'm not a Christian.' That was his way of giving me what amounted to a compliment without compromising his principles.”

The time in Denver went by quickly. Moishe and Ceil had stored some of their belongings at a friend's home, and it was somewhat bittersweet to ship those belongings to California. Denver was no longer home base, and when they returned, it would be as visitors.

Now the Rosen family was in the home stretch of their road trip, and Moishe was eager to get to Los Angeles.

He organized it so that they would travel through the desert at night, but even so, the summer heat of the Mojave was brutal. In those days air-conditioned cars were only for the very wealthy—most people simply rolled down their windows. Moishe and Ceil carried plenty of water in the car, and Ceil continually soaked washcloths to keep each family member cool.

At last, the four Rosens pulled up in front of their new home between two and three in the morning. After getting some sleep, the family surveyed the house. Ceil and the girls were happy with the grassy backyard, which had an avocado tree and a few other plants and a fence so that—oh, joy—the family would be able to have a dog!

The property also included a large garage, but the mission had been renting that space to a carpenter/cabinet maker, George Devries, who lived nearby. George was rather new in business and had a wife and family to support. Moishe knew that if he claimed his right to the garage, it would put his new neighbor out of business. There was no way the carpenter would find a comparable deal on rent anywhere. So they struck a bargain; Devries built, at his own expense, a carport right next to the garage, and with the Rosen's needs thus met, he continued to rent their garage.

George and his wife, Elfrieda (Elfie), were German Jews whose families had fled Hitler. Their oldest boy, Jerry, was about Lyn's age, and soon two more little boys came along. The Devrieses were excellent neighbors, and the two families became fast friends.

It would be an understatement to say that Moishe got off to a slow start with the work in Los Angeles. Zimmerman came back from his trip, but his promised help never materialized. From him, Moishe had inherited a Tuesday night Bible study on the East Side of LA in a formerly Jewish neighborhood. The same six or seven people trudged to these meetings each week.

Moishe recalled, “After my first Tuesday night meeting, I remember thinking that the people who attended were looking at me rather expectantly. We had already served refreshments and I could not imagine what else I was supposed to provide. Then Ken Reeves, the man who had previously assisted Zimmerman, observed, ‘You didn't take care of their car fare.'” The attendees were used to receiving a dollar, and as Moishe said, “The bus fare was nowhere near a dollar in those days. I concluded that he'd more or less been paying people to attend.”

It wasn't long before Ken Reeves seemed inclined to move a good two hours south and do missionary work in San Diego. This move suited Moishe quite well because he'd never asked to have an assistant.

Moving the work from Boyle Heights to West LA made perfect sense, but Moishe wasn't entirely sure how to go about it, other than moving the Bible studies to the mission house on Pico. “In actuality,” Moishe recalled, “God began the work there without me.”

During Moishe's Bible school years, Ceil had attended missionary training classes with him at the mission center in Manhattan where she learned about children's ministry. Now that she had a school-age daughter who needed to learn the Bible, Ceil had jumped right into the LA work by starting a Bible club. It was a small group, consisting of Lyn and some of her neighborhood school friends. Before long Ceil was teaching stories from the Old Testament, with a view toward prophecy and New Testament thinking. Two of the neighborhood children, Harry and Elsa Cohen, heard about the Bible club and asked their mother if they could attend. She gave her consent.

Harry and Elsa's mother, Hilda, was a Holocaust survivor. Having lived through the camps, she firmly believed that God had spared her life for a purpose. She desperately wanted to know more about God, and now two of her children were studying the Bible with Jewish neighbors who believed in Jesus. Something was building up inside her until one day she seemed ready to explode.

Moishe described his first meeting with Hilda Cohen:

This short lady came stomping up to our front door, and we let her in out of courtesy. She talked in an excited way and I could understand that she felt very strongly about something, but it was hard to understand her. She had a heavy Dutch accent. I could see on her left arm the tattoo of the concentration camps. She only knew a few words of English, and she said that she had heard that I was a domine. At first I thought that she was saying “domino” and I was confused. But in her broken English, she told me “a man with a Bible.” I said, “A minister?” She said, “That's right.” And she pointed to me with a questioning look, so I nodded my head that yes, I was a minister. And we just stared at each other because we had this language barrier.

At that time, the American Board of Missions to the Jews had a missionary couple, Dr. Elias Den Arend [sometimes called Eddie] and his wife, Margaret. They were from Holland, and he was a Jewish believer in Jesus. They were in San Jose, and they were coming to visit us in a day or two. So I told Hilda Cohen that we had another domine coming to visit and he was from Holland. She wanted to know if he was Jewish, too. And I nodded my head. She asked, ‘And he believes in Jesus like you?' I nodded yes, and her face broke out into a big smile and she said, very emphatically, ‘Good!' She was so eager that the next morning she knocked on the door and wanted to know if the domine from Holland was there yet. I took her address and promised to come tell her when they arrived.

Moishe did as he promised. The Den Arends talked and prayed with Mrs. Cohen, and she received Jesus as her Messiah. Then the three of them went over to Hilda's house. “Before long, her husband, Isaac, had also prayed to receive the Lord,” Moishe said.

The ministry slowly began to percolate. Moishe planned his week around regularly scheduled meetings. First was the weekly Bible study on Tuesday nights, which was moved from Boyle Heights to the Pico house. Moishe liked this informal style of teaching. It did not elevate him but helped him to facilitate group study and discussion. Following the study, Ceil served refreshments.

On Sundays, Moishe preached outdoors in the park. His experience with hecklers stood him in good stead. Before long, a frustrated opera singer who happened to be an Italian Jew took to singing loudly whenever Moishe tried to speak. Moishe spoke privately to the man (whose name was also Moishe) and told him, “I know you don't agree with what I say, Moishe, but for me this is a living. I'm paid for preaching. I have a wife and two children. Let me preach. Let me do my work.” The opera singer appreciated the request and actually began singing to help Moishe draw a crowd. He sang traditional Jewish songs, operatic arias, and sometimes songs from a Christian hymnal until he moved from the area. Before he left, however, he told Moishe that he believed in Jesus.

There were several such incidents that, if told all together, would seem to indicate that Moishe Rosen was off to a great start in Los Angeles. But these anecdotes, while true, did not represent everyday life and ministry.
*
The fact was, on days when no meetings were scheduled, Moishe would wake up each morning and decide what he should do that day. If there was someone for him to visit, he'd visit. If not, he'd work on preparing his Bible study. He often spoke at churches, and frequently he met Jewish people who wanted to know more about Jesus. Sometimes he received a knock on the door from a Jewish inquirer. How did they know to knock on his door? For one thing, a small plaque on the front of the house read, “Reverend Martin Meyer Rosen.”

Having just been ordained, he was rather proud of the title and took satisfaction in referring to himself as “Reverend.” Besides, it was useful in establishing initial contacts. Nevertheless, in later years he came to regard the use of his honorific titles an unnecessary and unwholesome desire for status. He dropped the title altogether and discouraged his staff from using titles as well.

The Pico address was also listed in the phone directory under the American Board of Missions to the Jews. It was not surprising for someone to stop by and ask for gospel tracts to use in telling Jewish friends or neighbors about Jesus.

Moishe's ability to connect with people was a vital part of his ministry, but as yet he did not know how to plan for or organize such opportunities. He simply took them as they came. Despite his slow start in Los Angeles, the ten years Moishe spent there became a pivotal point in his development as a mission leader.

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A Yiddish phrase roughly translated “meant to be.”

*
When Pastor MacDonald discovered that Moishe did not know any Greek (the language in which the New Testament was originally recorded), he secured Moishe's promise that if the council ordained him, he would do a year's study in Greek. Moishe kept that promise by taking a class at Biola.

*
Moishe came to insist on detailed reporting because anecdotes, while often encouraging, could not account for amounts of time spent, number of people called or visited, number of tracts handed out and doors knocked on, and so forth. His own lack of accountability in those first few months taught him the importance of planning, preparing, and reporting on one's work.

SEVENTEEN

Every knock is a boost.

—MOISHE ROSEN

I
t was early evening, and still light outside the little mission house on West Pico Blvd. The girls were off playing and Moishe was telling Ceil about his day as she cleared away the last of the dishes.

“I wanted to tell you about a man I met with today. His name is Abe Schneider, and he was a truck driver before he became a missionary. He does door-to-door canvassing and he thinks I should do it too, you know, to help get the work going. So I went with him to see how he does it.”

“Uh huh.” Ceil nodded to indicate that she was listening.

“He has a big smile, like this,” Moishe grinned expansively, “Well, not quite like that; his smile is better than mine and his teeth are nicer. But he knocks on the door with this big smile and when someone opens the door, he says—now picture this, with that big smile on his face!— ‘Could I ask you a question? If an atom bomb hit Los Angeles today, what would happen to you?'”

Ceil's eyebrows shot up as she gasped, “Really?”

“Yes. Imagine how embarrassed I felt. But the strangest thing was . . . some people really wanted to talk about what might happen to them when they died. And would you believe, one person listened to the whole gospel and decided to believe, then and there!”

“So are you going to do it?”

“Go door-to-door? I guess I can try it. But when I do it, I'll leave out the bomb part.”

“What will you say?”

“Well, what about this: Hello, my name is Martin Rosen and I'm from the Beth Sar Shalom Hebrew Christian Fellowship. We have a Bible study every Tuesday night and I want to invite you.' He paused. “Then I could hand them a post card that gives the time and place of our study. And if they want to know more, I'll give them one of our tracts, like, ‘What is a Christian?'”