From Hollywood to Heaven

   It was September, 1979. I was a newly enrolled college student at California State University of Northridge, about 45 minutes from the Hollywood Hills where I grew up. Status: Freshman. Major: Marketing. Age: 20. Background: Jewish, no bar-mitzvah. Lifestyle: reckless and immoral. About two weeks earlier, a young Seventh-day Adventist man named Richard had introduced me to his pastor, Pastor J.B. Church, who gave me a copy of the book, The Desire of Ages, written by a woman named Ellen G. White. Who was this lady? I was clueless. I knew about Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones, John Travolta, and discos, but nothing about religion. For the past six years -- starting at age 14 -- I had been a pot smoking, cocaine snorting, disco dancing teen. It’s a miracle I survived.

   With CSUN classes about to begin, I sat inside my dorm room and surveyed with sinking disinterest my stack of first semester textbooks, especially Statistics and Economics.   Yuck! What have I gotten myself into? I chose Marketing as my major, not from careful thought or deep interest, but because my dad was a businessman. During the previous summer I had worked in and around Hollywood as an “Extra” in the movies, but I realized that my chances of achieving wealthy stardom were pie-in-the-sky. So I chose a business career.

   My dorm room was small, like most dorm rooms; four walls, two beds, two desks, and one door into a shared bathroom ...