One80: Testimonies of Transformation

109: From Kibbutz To Christ, Raviv Dror (Israel), Part 1

• OneWay Ministries • Season 4 • Episode 109

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What happens when a life built on certainty starts to crack? Hear the One80 of Raviv Dror, who grew up in a hardline communist kibbutz where the collective came first, religion, even true Judaism, was scorned, and affection felt scarce. His story carries us from growing up on a faithless kibbutz to a cross-continent love that opens a door he isn’t ready to walk through—until everything else falls apart.

In part 1, hear how God broke Raviv free from communist ideology and slowly, faith starts to move in.

Helpful Links:

Raviv’s book Three in One: Being Israeli, Jewish & Believer IN CHRIST

Raviv’s book The Third Way

Raviv’s Faithful Tales Children’s books, series


Apologetics resources recommended by Raviv:

Dr. Frank Turek, CrossExamined.org 

Prof John Lennox https://www.johnlennox.org/

Dr. William Lane Craig reasonablefaith.org 

Dennis Prager, https://www.prageru.com/

Prayercast Israel


Other resources:

Zionism: A Concise History, Alex Ryvchin


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OneWay Ministries

Announcer:

Welcome to One80. Transforming testimonies from next door to across the globe. Be amazed at how God works to bring people to Himself. Share today's One80 with a friend. It might be the best news they hear today.

Raviv Dror:

It's an endless circle of maintaining idea, concept, things like that. Religion was a curse, no faith. I would say God was you you couldn't find him anywhere on the sidewalk in this kibbutz.

Margaret Ereneta:

Raveev Dror grew up far from God in an Israeli kibbutz. 19 years of searching, then 10 minutes one day, a life of questions were answered. Raviv became a believer. Now he's an Israeli apologist and evangelist. This is Margaret Ereneta. Welcome to Raviv's One80, part one.

Raviv Dror:

My name is Raviv Dror. I was born in Israel. I live now in Israel in a city called Afula, in the northern part of Israel. I was born in a kibbutz in the 60s of the last century. It was a communist, heavy communist socialist, secular kibbutz, like all the kibbutzim were, but my kibbutz was especially heavy communist. I still remember that uh we marched in 1st of May with a red flag with Lenin, Stalin. It's still heavy in my memories.

Margaret Ereneta:

So kibbutzim is the plural of kibbutz, and Raviv is going to take us through what it was like growing up in a kibbutz and how communism played out there.

Raviv Dror:

People don't know uh exactly what communism means. Communism is the you know the overall word to describe, but socialism is the economical branch of the communism. If we take it to the kibbutz, there's uh like people who decide, who rule in a way, and the other, like in the nature, you know, there is a queen and there is ants that serve the queen. So in communism, a ruler, like okay, tsa or a president, and the ants or the people serve the president. In the kibbutz, uh, there is people who decide, and the other one serves the idea. Communism is an ideology that is based upon, you know, Marx, and it's totally against all the things that we believe in as believers in Christ.

Raviv Dror:

It's against religion, it's against the concept of family, it's all about work, it's not about the individual, it's all about the group, it's all about the majority, not about you know your needs as a person. And that's how I grew up. I didn't grow up with uh with my family. I had a family, of course, but I spent with my parents more or less half an hour a day. We didn't sleep with our parents, we slept together um with our friend, with our group, but we didn't have any authority, parents' authority on us.

Raviv Dror:

They didn't really know what's going on with us. They were busy working for the idea to hold this kibbutz. You need your parents so bad. Their role in in your life is so big, and if you don't have that, it affects you in many ways. And it did, you know, it did. And uh we we had to grow up to be like them when we will be older, to have kids, and then we work, and their kids, you know, it's an endless circle of maintaining uh idea, concept, uh things like that. Religion was a curse, no faith. I would say God was you you couldn't find him anywhere on the sidewalk and this kibbutz.

Raviv Dror:

We hated the religious people, the ultra-orthodox, we hated them. You dislike, maybe not hate, but you dislike the um all the concept of religion. You do um the Bible celebration, but you do it out of tradition because it's nice and it's happy and the Jewish people have a very nice holidays. But we didn't know or we didn't think about any biblical concept, you know, just just to do it. That was my childhood, childhood without parents. That's how we grew up until I was 18 years old. In Israel, the young people go to the army when they are 18 years old, and um served in the army four and a half years, then I served in the army 20 years in reserve.

Margaret Ereneta:

Raviv is going to explain the start of his 19-year search for truth. It started with marrying a believer, but it was a long process for him, so we'll start here.

Raviv Dror:

The first time Christ entered my life in a way without me believing in him was when I was like 23. My wife introduced me to him, but I didn't know what she's talking about. We were boyfriend, girlfriend, and she introduced me uh to Christ. I didn't know what she's talking about. It was in Israel. We went together to Colombia, um, we got married. Before I went, my wife was a Christian, Zionist Christian, but yeah, she she loved Israel, and she came to Israel.

Raviv Dror:

I met her there in the kibbutz, and uh we got to know each other, and then uh we went to Colombia together. It's we call it like a trip after the army for me, like Muchilel. If people know maybe this term, Muchila is a backpack. Most of the young people that finish the army here goes out for a year or something like that to travel around the world, usually to South America or to the east. And then now we went to church, to her church. Everybody talks Spanish, I didn't talk, and I went there, and everybody, everybody loves me a lot.

Raviv Dror:

Hug me, one has to understand that one of the fruit of communism is that said the Bible that love will grow cold, right? There's no love in communism, there's a distance between people. My father, for example, never told me he loves me. He never hugged me once in my life, he never gave me, you know, encouragement or good word. Never. He was special, but it's a it's a fruit of the system because we're like, okay, father, child, but you don't have this closeness. And then I went to this church and everybody hug, love, smile, things I wasn't experienced.

Raviv Dror:

Again, in Israel, in that time at least, we are more cold people, we're like the European in that sense. So I liked it very much, and uh I didn't understand what they're talking about. I liked the services. I started to study Spanish, and more and more I couldn't understand what they're talking about. I went on Sunday, but not on all Sundays, stayed home, but sometimes I went. And I liked it. I liked the experience, but nothing, nothing entered. No, nothing, not to the heart, not to the mind.

Raviv Dror:

After a year, a year and something, we got married, went to uh live in Israel, and after like four, and I wasn't a believer in Israel. Israel is a secular, at least where I live, a very secular people, friend, family. And I wasn't a believer. Um, and I also told my wife we had three kids, and I told her, look, I won't talk to them against religion, but please don't talk to them for the religion. Let's stay neutral because I was afraid that if they start talking about Jesus and about God in a place that we lived, you know how children can be cruel and children will start to bother them and didn't want it.

Raviv Dror:

She talked to them about Jesus, of course, but it wasn't like at home, you know, it wasn't present like a Christian home need to have God every place. So we grew up after 14 years in Israel. I was sent in a relocation back to Colombia for work with an Israeli company. We packed our things and we went. The idea was four years. We went there, and then I went to church with her and with the children and with her mother. Her uncle was a pastor. We went to this church, liked it very much. Obviously, knew Spanish, you know, like I know more or less English.

Raviv Dror:

I always work in the Latin market. I used to go all this Latin market from Spain, Portugal, Central America, and South America. This was my job, going back and forth in airplanes for water project. We we were speaking Spanish at home and talking to my client all the time. So Spanish is my second language, you can say. Yeah. So I went there again, spent time in the church. You have to understand I was a uh I wasn't a believer, but I knew the the New Testament already, but I didn't believe it as a believer. I always say first time it entered my heart and not in my mind. The second time it entered to my mind but not in my heart. And I said, nice, but okay. You know, good to know, let's say. It's a good food, it's a good, you know, good to know in a in a secular level. Then my company, Israeli company said, okay, you have to come back to Israel. I said, I don't want to come to Israel, I want to stay and open my own company in Colombia.

Margaret Ereneta:

So here's where life does take a turn. Raviv's company was very difficult to get off the ground. And so he is at the end of himself and he is literally crying out.

Raviv Dror:

What a decision. Not recommended, but I did it. It's out of pride, it's not out of any anything else. Later, you know that God was building the story, but we decided to stay. And then everything started to go down economically first. I lived my life very comfortably. My wife was working, I was working, good salaries, upper middle class, all the American dream. And then um I opened the company, no salary anymore, and our saving, you know, going down, down, downhill. It was very difficult for me.

Raviv Dror:

And then something else happened um emotionally. So, what I think is that God was planning the perfect storm for me, and I got to a very, very bad situation, uh, and I even got depressed. And um, you know, you don't see any hope. I was so afraid that we'll be out of business, out of our home, out of everything. The money was running out. I had a family of four or five to support, and from a very comfortable situation, I didn't know how to pay rent next month. On that, you can put the emotional stress that was there.

Raviv Dror:

And I went to the shower one day to take a shower. I went in not a believer, and I went out a believer. This is my testimony, you know. So many things happen in that, you know, 10 minutes that you understand later. You know, you don't understand it at the time. Yeah, and I became a believer. It wasn't like you know, the wow, and uh how they say fire fireworks, it wasn't that, but no, how can God create um the the word in six days?

Raviv Dror:

How can you know why evil? All those questions that apologetics people deal with mostly, you know. So um I had them all the time, and I felt like you know, the Jew ask for sign and the Greek wisdom. I always told my wife, said, if the chair will rise up now, you know, start floating in the air, I will believe in God. And the question why Christianity and not Islam? Why Buddhism and not Judaism, why, why, why, why? Lots of whys. And I had them, and nobody could really give me an answer, a good answer, at least, what I thought. And then in that shower, I received, let's say, three answers. It was two answers and a half, let's say, to something that uh I was wondering about all the time.

Margaret Ereneta:

Friends, God meets you where you're at, even if it's in the shower. Raviv goes on to explain those answers to the questions he had. The two and a half answers to three questions. The first one was he noticed the animals on the farm he was serving at. And are the animals any different than the humans? Why would they be any different? Well, Raviv got the answer he was looking for in the shower.

Raviv Dror:

So it became clear to me that we were made, we were created, and not evolution was not true. Totally, totally not true. That there is a creator that creates human beings and create the other animals. I didn't think like that before. Creation is real.

Margaret Ereneta:

And next Raviv is thinking about his people in Israel and pondering this with the Lord.

Raviv Dror:

Then I thought again, I thought about Israel in that 10 minutes, about Israel, and said, Israel, you know, 4,000 years. There's no way, natural way, that Israel still exists as a nation. Why it's not bigger in number? Okay, they killed us, and you know, along the history, and um I understood. I understood why we're small, and somebody is behind it, and that somebody is God. And somebody kept Israel all this time. Small but flourish, you know, and this somebody is God.

Margaret Ereneta:

So the third thing Raviv figured out was a miracle. He finally figured out that his mother-in-law was a miracle. He explained that many years before she had seen a kibbutz on an American TV station as a believer. And she suddenly felt God promised to her that she would someday serve in a kibbutz. It was actually her Christian daughter who went to Israel, met, and married Raviv. And then the two of them brought her mom back to Israel. So 19 years of searching and wondering about God were all coming about right in the shower in this 10 minutes, as he said. And out came Raviv, a new believer.

Raviv Dror:

She went to work in the dining room and folding clothes for the members of the kibbutz. And it's not from this world, you know, this story. It just doesn't happen, you know, it doesn't happen. So so amazing. Just God answered her prayer wishes uh through that story. So those three things from the moment I received or I knew who is Christ in a way, to when I received him to my life and start to believe was 19 years. It's a long, long, long process.

Raviv Dror:

Because I'm a Jew, because I'm a Jew, and because I'm come from a communist uh background, and you know the podcast is One80, so it's 180, you know. I went out, I told my wife that I believe. Now I believe. We wrote the date and everything. After I received Christ, a month, two months, I don't remember. I went there for work again. And we sat down and they told me both, you received Christ. And I asked him, Wow, how do you know? And they say something about your smile. So for me, this is the confirmation that something happened. You know, I was so happy that they detected it, they saw it, and they they were happy, of course, you know.

Margaret Ereneta:

So next, Raviv talks about how the Bible comes to life. So we already knew what was in the Bible because of his wife and the church he was going to, but he explains how it starts going from head to the heart.

Raviv Dror:

I had the background of knowing more or less what is the New Testament, what is the Old Testament, not like a scholar or something, but you know, you read, you are in the church, you know who is Jesus, you know what is the gospel, you know, you know, things, but now you believe them. It's different. It's not just, you know, words that people speak or like to study physics, you know, it's uh you believe. And it's uh and that's what people don't know, don't understand what is to born again.

Raviv Dror:

But uh at least with me, it wasn't like again, fireworks, and but you just the truth is in you, and you start to see things that you didn't see before, you know, uh spiritually. I explain it more or less like you read the Bible not as a believer, you're you read it in in 1D, maybe 2D, but as a believer, it's 3D, it takes volume. Just for an example, you know, first time I came to Israel as a believer, it was amazing because you see all the sites, and then now as a believer, you see, there was Gideon, you know, the judge.

Raviv Dror:

There was uh, you know, Jesus walked here. These things come to life in 3D, no, and not in some, oh okay, it's a story, you know. And this is Nazareth, and here he was, you know, they were pushing from the mountain, and all these things. So it's it's the same in the Bible. You read it in totally different understanding, and it's yeah, it's become a living word, not a dead word. The Bible makes sense. You read it as something true, not as a story. You know, people don't understand why David was after God's own heart, you know.

Raviv Dror:

And when you read it not as a believer, just text or stories like you read any other story, you don't understand. And then when you read it as a believer, you go deep into the story, you understand who was David, you know, and why he was so special to God, even though he was a sinner, you know. And we never, as kids, we never studied the Bible, we studied the Bible just to remember, for example, you know, and we hated the religious people. We we we hated them. We I I I don't know the word if hated or dislike, but we didn't like. We didn't like everything that comes up because we were communists, we were socialist, we were in that darkness, spiritual darkness, no, without knowing it.

Margaret Ereneta:

We're going to leave here and join us next week for part two, where we'll see what Raveev did with this burden of the spiritual darkness with his people One80 is brought to you by One Way Ministries.

Announcer:

Exalt Christ, advance his gospel.

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