Ed Grifenhagen — a devout Jew — was about 13 years into his marriage when he told his wife he had a plan, one he said at the time “shouldn’t be too hard” to accomplish.
His endeavor was to disprove Scripture by reading through the Old and New Testaments.
Now a devout Christian, Grifenhagen told CBN News his pompous pronouncement that his attempt at falsifying the Bible would be a simple task was “the most arrogant thing I think I’ve ever said.”
“I thought, if I’m not gonna believe it, I need to read what I profess to not believe,” he explained of his reasoning for cracking open the pages of Scripture. “[I] was obsessed with reading it.”
From January to September of 2000, Grifenhagen pored over the pages of the Old Testament. When he finished it, his curiosity got the better of him. Fearful of his father’s upbraiding, the Christian-curious Jew ran a clandestine errand to a faith-based bookstore, where he picked up a copy of the New Testament.
Grifenhagen said he resorted to his own devices to get a copy of the full Bible because — despite growing up in the buckle of the Bible Belt — not a single Christian in Columbus, Georgia, shared the Gospel with him in his first 35 years of life.
From September to November of that year, he read the pages of the New Testament, as well as a handful of books by Christian apologist Josh McDowell and atheist-turned-believer Lee Strobel.
Exactly one year from the start of his journey to disprove the God of the Bible, on Jan. 17, 2001, Grifenhagen arrived at a conclusion altogether different from what he believed just a short 12 months prior.
“I realized that I believed every single word in that book, and I was just blown away,” he reflected. “The book that I professed to not believe in, I ended up believing every word was true and infallible and inherent, and … I just cried out to the Lord to save me.”
“I was wrecked and He rescued me,” Grifenhagen added.
As his faith evolved and his understanding of Scripture deepened, the evangelical pastor found yet another curiosity: understanding the Hebrew origins of the Christian faith.
“From the first verse of Genesis,” he said, “it all points to Jesus.”
Grifenhagen, now a preacher and evangelist, began studying the etymology of the Bible, which led him to compile a devotional, “365 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know.”
Studying the original Hebrew words of Scripture has enriched Grifenhagen’s faith by revealing the depth of meaning behind the passages of the Old and New Testaments.
You can listen to our full conversation with Grifenhagen in the video above.
