Daniel Ortner grew up Jewish. His grandfather died in the holocaust; his other grandparents were sent to a work camp in Siberia. In high school in South Florida, a Christian girlfriend introduced Daniel to Isaiah 53. The passage greatly piqued his interest in this suffering Messiah. However, his mother was diagnosed with cancer and Daniel became angry with God for taking her, leading him to profess atheism in college at Brandeis University where he debated Christians. But 2 years of atheism left him empty. Then the LDS missionaries found him. He joined the LDS Church at age 21 and says God spoke to him outside the Boston Temple. He served an LDS mission in the same part of Russia where his grandparents had been in a work camp (Novosibirsk, Russia). Daniel embraced the idea that man could become a god but not that God had been a man.