clifford-goldstein

Clifford Goldstein

Clifford Goldstein is editor
of the Adult Bible Study Guide.
He’s working on a book
tentatively titled Baptizing
the Devil: Evolution and the
Seduction of Christianity.”
He interviewed Dr. Larry Cohen
to obtain information for
this article.

The Jumping Jewish Doctor

in Spring 2016   |
Published on 01/07/2016   |
5 min | <<|>>

A skydiving secular Jew who became a Seventh-day Adventist? If I didn’t know better, I would assume that was referring to me. But in this case, I would be wrong. Instead this is referring to Dr. Larry Cohen, an emergency room physician working in Colorado Springs, Colorado—a Seventhday Adventist with an important story to tell about the importance of healthful living.
Sky Bum
Born in Brooklyn, raised in Southern CA, Larry grew up in a non-practicing Jewish home. Though he always believed in God, he knew very little about Christianity.

“I didn’t know,” he said, “the difference between a Protestant and a Catholic. For me, if you weren’t Jewish, and weren’t a Muslim, you were a Christian, period.”

Young Larry had always wanted to be a doctor, but around 19-years-old he became a serious skydiver, and that pretty much derailed his plans to be a physician. He was involved in competition jumping at Lake Elsinore, California; his ten-man team was even contending for a world record. Competitive jumping like that took so much time that he all but dropped out of school in order to skydive.

“I was what they called a ‘sky bum,’” he said. “That’s a person who doesn’t really have a life outside the drop zone.”
Off to Loma Linda University
Eventually, Larry burned out on the skydiving and started thinking about the rest of his life. While working in a machine shop he went to a community college and then transferred to Loma Linda University because, he said, “it had a great program for a BS in respiratory therapy. Being at LLU eventually led him to go into medicine. There he met June, a young lady with an SDA background and they got married and had kids. For the first few years together, the Cohens hadn’t had much to do with the SDA church, but then June wanted to start taking the kids to Sabbath School and, eventually, church. Larry tagged along, and all through medical school and after he would attend church, though, he admitted, “I slept through most of the sermons.

As the years went by, however, the bits and pieces he had heard between naps in the pew began to sink in. “Things started to make sense,” he said, “and I would even pray. I am an Emergency Room physician, and at one point I was having a lot of patients, well, die on me. I prayed, Please, Lord, please don’t let anyone die on me today. Right after that prayer, a 94-year old man came in, and instantly flat-lined. I was about to pronounce him dead, but—and I had never seen anything like this before—he revived, right on the table in front of me. I knew that my prayer had been answered. It made a big impression on me, for sure!”

Between that experience, and others, as well as having attended NET programs, andhaving been exposed to the ministries of Doug Batchelor, Dwight Nelson, and Mark Finley, Larry gave his heart to the Lord and was baptized into the SDA church.

“I used to think that Christians were nuts,” he said. “I guess I am nuts, too.”
His Own Brush With Death
Today, Larry does what he can to witness for his faith, and the health message is a big part of how he makes initial contact with others. He learned the importance of this message, though, the hard way.

“I neglected my health,” he said, “to the point where I almost died.” At one point, he had to undergo a three-vessel CABG (coronary artery bypass graft); there were complications right after the surgery, and he was rushed emergently to the operating room that same night.

“Before this crisis, the only vegetables I ate, besides French fries, were the lettuce and onion on my burger,” he said. “I thought I was invincible. Nothing like getting your chest cracked open twice in one day to help you sense your mortality.”

After the surgery, and very depressed, Larry wondered what God wanted him to do with his life. Praying, asking for guidance, he said that he was in bed and heard a voice say to him, “Psalm 57.” He ignored it, but then heard it again, twice more, and so he had no choice but to read the Psalm. Verse seven jumped out at him, “My heart is fixed, O Lord, my heart is fixed.”

“At that moment,” he said, “it hit me. The Lord was healing my heart, both physically and spiritually, and from then on I knew that He wanted me to help bring others to health, such as what Peter and John did in Acts, at the Beautiful Gate. Once I can bring health to someone, I can introduce them to the Lord and the gospel.”
A Medical Evangelist
From that day on, Dr. Cohen has done a lot of research in lifestyle medicine, diet, exercise, and disease reversal, and is now a true believer in the Adventist health message.

“After what happened,” he said, “I wanted to share what I had learned with others.” Not long afterward, his local pastor asked Larry if he were familiar with CHIP (Complete Health Improvement Program), an Adventist-originated lifestyle enrichment program that is designed to reduce disease risk factors through the adoption of better health habits and lifestyle modifications. Basically, it was teaching people the SDA health message. “I had heard about it, so I went to a conference and found out that it basically taught what I had learned and began doing the CHIP classes at our church.”

Today one of his greatest passions is seeing people restored to health. “It’s so great to watch people who, after doing a CHIP program, enjoy the results of better health: losing weight, lowering blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, as well as getting off medications for diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, GI problems, and so forth.”

He also has a burden for Seventh-day Adventists and health as well. “The one thing I have noticed,” he said, “is that our church is as sick with the same diseases as the rest of the world. We have a health message that is as important as our evangelistic message. Sure, we pray for members who are sick, which is fine, but we also have so much light on how to avoid so much of this sickness to begin with. The world is taking up our health message and I feel we are forgetting it.”

Larry believes that living a healthy lifestyle is a gift you can give yourself and share with others. He says. “The Lord wants us to be healthy. Unfortunately, there is a lot of bad information in the world today about health and nutrition. However, as Seventh-day Adventists we should be leaders in health. The best information on healthy living is still outlined in the Bible and the writings of Ellen White. We would do well to remember (for ourselves and our patients) – it is never too late to start living healthfully.”

Larry, who still skydives (at 62), recently started CADS (Coronary Artery Diseased Skydivers). It’s a group of jumpers, like himself, who all have heart disease. “I want the group to make some jumps together,” he said, “to raise money for different charities. We’ll see if it comes together, but so far I have about six jumpers in the group from all over the US.”

No question, as long as his parachute still opens, Larry Cohen, the jumping Jewish doctor, will continue to share Christ with his patients and inspire them to live healthier lives. We encourage you to do likewise.

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