Religion and faith - Your story

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

I became a Christian much like Paul did when he was knocked off his horse...it wasn’t by choice, I was called.  In 1992, I was dating a girl (who later became my wife).  She belonged to a Christian church (World Wide Church of God, founded by Herbert Armstrong) which was mixing a lot of the Laws of Moses (unclean foods, Jewish Holy Days) into Christianity.  After a couple of dates, she informed me she wasn’t supposed to be dating outside of her church.  So, I told her I would look into her beliefs.

I was raised a Christian (Catholic), but didn’t practice it, didn’t go to church, and knew only two verses of the bible, Gen 1:1 and John 3:16.  So, I could maybe be categorized a “Christian” for the purpose of a Census, but that is about as far as my Christianity went.

Luckily, I hadn’t been brain-washed enough by the Catholic Church to think I couldn’t interpret the bible myself without the help of the Vatican.  So, I thought, “All these denominations can’t all be right since they have differing beliefs.  I’ll just read the bible and see what it says and let the chips fall where they may, even if it means I can’t date my current girlfriend."

On my very first night of my “research” into the bible, I happened to begin at the book of Galatians.  Which just so happens to be addressed to a near carbon-copy of my girlfriend’s church.

After reading for about an hour, it was obvious that her church’s mixing of the Law of Moses was off-track. And God opened my eyes and I started thinking to myself, “What is the purpose of their deception?”  Then God allowed me to perceive the spiritual battle that was going on in her church’s deception – that there was a battle being waged over the possession of something of value – souls.  That there was a purpose to their deception, that demonic forces were deceiving them to keep them from being saved.

At that point, I got up from the table where I was studying and wept out of joy that I finally believed in Jesus (I guess you can say I believed in Jesus because God allowed me to perceive the forces deceiving my girlfriend’s church).  And I paced my floor of my apartment weeping out of joy that I finally believed.

At that moment I asked a myself a question, “Is this why [my girlfriend and the association with her church] had been brought into my life, so that I would believe?” (I actually used to subscribe to the free magazines her church published when I was a teenager, because I occasionally stumbled upon their broadcast on TV very late at night.  And it just so happened that when I was in college, I became friends with a guy whose dad was a deacon in that church.  And through that friend I became friends with many of the sons of the leadership of that church and they had become my circle of friends for several years and I hung around their families, including their parents, almost every weekend.  It was through them I met my girlfriend at a party and I felt an immediate spiritual attraction to her the first instant I laid eyes on her and I had never felt that before with anyone, much less the first moment of meeting someone.  This really perplexed me because I had always treated women worse than I had treated my cars, and I was hard on my cars.  I kept a close eye on her for a year because she was dating one of my close friends at the time and I was also dating someone.  After a year, neither one of us was dating anyone and I asked her out.  My study began a couple of weeks later.)

So, my question “Is this why [all these things] had been brought into my life, so that I would believe?” was very loaded and included events going back to when I was a teenager.  Immediately after I asked that I received the Holy Spirit and God spoke to me and said, “Yes, that is the reason why.  Now go and tell them the truth.”

Obviously, my revelation from God didn’t sit well with my girlfriend or her parents, or my friends in her church, or the parents of my friends who just happen to be part of the leadership of that church.  To put in mildly, it was as if God had dropped a bomb in my life and my “revelation” sent shockwaves through many families and turned mine upside down.  I had been a non-religious friend to several of the families of the leadership of a church, I had been a guest at their dinner tables dozens upon dozens of times...and now I was coming to them claiming that I, a non-religious person, had a message for them from God that they were deceived.

Through all of it, I saved my girlfriend (who later became my wife) and just of few friends out of that church.  But I also led my mother and step-father to Christ and my brothers still to this day frequently ask me questions about Jesus.

Since my wife’s old church was dabbling in the Law of Moses, I became a student of the Old Testament (OT) as well as the New Testament (NT).  That has helped me realize that the whole NT can be taught from the OT and every NT doctrine has an OT precedent.  This is how the Apostles were able to use the OT as the bible of the first generation of Christians.  That is how the people of Berea were able to use the OT to verify what Paul was teaching: “They examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” (Acts 17:11)

And since the whole NT can be taught from the OT, Paul commanded the churches “Do not go beyond what is written." (1Cor 4:6)