A Jewish millionaire lost it all, got Christ and thus found more than he ever had

Steve Olin, a Jewish boy from Brooklyn, made and lost millions, fell into drugs and was close to becoming homeless when he found the ultimate answer to set his life on course.

As a high school pitcher, he threw baseballs in the high 90 mph range. The New York Yankees wanted to sign him in 1962. His lifelong dream was within reach.

But his family, of modest means, insisted he go to college.

“The Yankees were impressed with me,” Olin says on an Israel Media Ministries video. “But my father and my family had never gone to college. My dad wouldn’t co-sign the contract because I was a minor. He said, ‘Son, I want you to get a college education, and then after college you can go into baseball.’

“I was heartbroken,” he says.

Still he honored his parents. He received a full scholarship at St. John’s University, where he is listed as Steve Olshansky on their ’65-66 roster. (Steve Olin who played for the Cleveland Indians is a different person.)

“I wanted to stay in New York,” he says. “God has a sense of humor that a Jewish boy went to a Catholic university.”

On the college baseball team, Olin injured his pitching arm.

“My team went on to the college world series without me. My arm was lame. I couldn’t pitch anymore. My fast balls had gone down to mediocre speed.”

Needless to say, he was crushed.

“God has different roads for us to go down,” he says, now looking back over his life. “He just didn’t have baseball as the road for me.”

Instead, Olin went into the business world.

“I rose very, very quickly to the very, very top of the business world,” he remembers. “God opened every door for me. Every position I went into as I climbed up in the business world got better and better and better.”

At 31, he started his own electronics business. “I was fortunate to get the Atari video game line. Every door I went through, it was like God opened up for me. It was like magic. It was like going to Las Vegas and throwing sevens, one after another. I had millions of dollars in the bank, a penthouse in New York, a penthouse in Miami, a 15-acre weekend estate in Connecticut.”

In eight years, he did $2 billion in sales, and his public company was valued at $6 billion, he says. His wife and child lived the good life with him.

Out of the blue, panic attacks hit him. Read the rest of Jewish millionaire comes to Christ.