Emphasis Preaching Journal

Steve Cohen, a pastor in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, told in the devotional booklet, Portals of Prayer, how his parents disowned him when he became a Christian missionary. They said that he had broken with Jewish tradition. As a result, he did not hear from them for nearly 15 years. When his father contracted cancer in 1990, he would not allow Steve to speak with him about urgent spiritual matters, even on his deathbed. However, his father did confess Christ as his Savior three days before he died because another person, a cousin, reached him with the Gospel.