Category: Ministry

My Conversion Story

Well, it all started when I was young. I believed in Santa Claus really hard—not being sardonic, this will go somewhere, so stick with it—and I got into a fight with another student at school because I believed in him. And my mom wasn’t very religious, so I guess I was brought up in American Paganism—I believed in Tooth Fairies, Easter Bunnies, Leprechauns, George Washington and the Cherry Tree, Abraham Lincoln Never Told a Lie, Santa Claus and Unquestioning Patriotism. Well, they had to tell me that Santa wasn’t real, and I really believed in it. It gave me such an optimistic view on life, how there was magic and all this other stuff. I lived in such a magical world until about eight years old. And that was a heart break, when I was sitting on the stoop of my stairs and listening to my dad tell me these things weren’t real. But, then I asked, “Is God real?” And my dad said, “Yes, and if you don’t believe in Him, you won’t go to heaven.” And my dad told me about Jesus. He told me that I had to love God above all other things, and that conflicted with my values, because my mom told me that you could love your family more than God. So, I was quite conflicted there. I had the Sunday School and all that other stuff, and learned “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” And I also had an illustrated children’s Bible, which I read. It was called “The Beginner’s Bible: TImeless Children’s Classics.” And I also learned about tall tales and legends.

So, I didn’t really believe, and I kind of was a warped little brat. I did a lot of messed up things between the ages of 8 and 15, and so the next step was Vacation Bible School and Sunday School lessons, where they taught me Jesus’ Parables, and the Sermon on the Mount. And I knew I liked Jesus. That much was certain, Jesus was the best story teller, and had the best morals, so I liked Him a lot. I think that’s generally why I’m a Christian to this day, is Jesus and His Sermon on the Mount. They reinforced in Church, “Build your foundation upon the rock.” So I did. I think that’s what saved me, more than anything else, was walking with Jesus at that time, and listening to Him above all others. And really laying the groundwork for the true principles of the faith. I was still a bratty, snot nosed little kid… but I liked Jesus.

Then I went to Youth Group, around 15 or 16, and had a really positive experience. We played, it gave me a good friend’s group, which taught me how to socialize. My older cousin was the leader of the group, and was an excellent organizer. And I went to the beach, and had a BLAST. And someone did that Ray Comfort thing with me, and so I believed a little more, but not quite.

Then around 17 or 18 I was messing around with my ex girlfriend, but was hungry for a better morality, as backtrack, I knew a lot of Atheists—more than Christian—and even my adult sunday school teachers weren’t really Christian, but were kind of looking for a social club. And backtrack a little more, I was at catechism, and they had to bring in a older Pastor to do my Catechism, because I wanted the true faith, not the “God is Santa Claus” thing that most churches were doing. And so, backtrack a little more, I actually prayed to God to get Saturday Morning detention if I skipped class—which was not the usual punishment—and I got Saturday Morning Detention… God’s disciplined me my whole life, and I’m thankful for that, but that gets to a little further down the line. But around 17 and 18 I was getting tired of my licentious ways, and was craving for a better way. My Ex’s family were kind of a little cold, and so was she, and I craved for the love of Jesus. And my friends also were kind of cold, and a little backward in their thinking, and I grew up my whole life hearing the other philosophy—the Atheist philosophy—and I just didn’t like it. I didn’t like the idea that truth is subjective, or morals are a choice, or the fact that love was disposable and kind of like nitre, just something chemical that when it ran out, so did you.

And then I did something very bad, and I was confronted with my need for a Savior, and then confronted again at a little older age, and realized even more I needed a savior. Like in the Bathtub I was crying out to the LORD to save me. I recognized I was a sinner. So, I stopped Masterbating, Watching Porn, Cussing, Blaspheming, and I actually shut off my phone from being able to look at the internet. And on that time, I kind of swung into a Hebrew Roots movement, and followed the Torah’s law—which was a huge mistake, I just went from licentiousness to Judaizing—and I went to jail for confessing crimes I committed at 14, and while there the Chaplain told me to read Galatians. So I did, and I realized I didn’t have to follow the Torah anymore—although I hadn’t been following it for a while, it was more like a fast.

Before that, I went to about 7 churches, and heard a lot of sermons on the Radio, and studied the evidence for scripture, read the major Evangelists, had good sunday school at a Baptist church, and a grounded teaching in the Old Testament. And I searched out the evidence for the Bible, and I found it all true. At least I’m satisfied that it’s true.

But, generally, the reason I’m a Christian, and what converted me, was the Lawlessness of friends who thought there was no right or wrong, and just being around them I saw something ugly, and it was transforming me and I didn’t like it. So, I wanted Jesus to make me a better person than what I was, so I asked Him to transform me, and I’ve searched for Him and found Him faithful in all things.

Song of Songs

Song of Songs. Yes, dating is biblical. There's no boundary on true love. In fact, Solomon, taking the woman into his harem, is kind of made to be the bad guy, stealing from the shepherd his true love, which the Shepherd has to win back like a stag jousting for his doe. The Shepherd and Shulamite even go out into the fields to make love, as she escapes the harem at night. Pretty sultry stuff... and romantic.

The point being, when it's real you know, and nothing's going to stop you from being with that person, even a whole king and his court.

Which is also why the Psalmist says, "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, do not stir up or awaken love until it is ready!" because the passion is hot, and if it's stirred for the wrong person, can be heartbreaking. So guard yourself, too, from falling in love, unless absolutely right.

Solomon loves her for her body, but the Shepherd for her soul. That's important, too. That's why the Shepherd fights, and beats him. As if there were no passion stirred, a man cannot fight for his suitor, because A: she doesn't want him and B: he doesn't love her.

The Book of Enoch

Enoch is not Scripture. It's not even Apocrypha. It seems kind of cultish, actually, like a Book of Mormon and Koran. I hope nobody {}lays it as [a] foundation, as it's not pure, but rather empty and kind of evil. I've known many people ruined by it. It's not good teaching, but is a cult text. If you want other books to study, try the Apostolic Fathers or the Old Testament Apocrypha. Or Martyr's Mirror by Thielman Van Braght. None of that is scripture, but it's better teaching than Enoch, which is completely void.

The White Rider

He came with God's perfect law
And left the whole world stunned.
He came, and dazzled, and grew to all
A man who was God's bastard son.

Beelzebub, a Satyr red, 
In hoofed haunches stormed
He, like Emperor of Rome, it seemed
Made play like he was stormed. 

Their two armies did collide
And piles were the bodies made.
One man with an old, old story
Was wise to them, and was a saint.

He saw the White Rider with his reel
Take his hordes through the country gate---
Two great bastions of that Roman World
Would do battle, and many men's a mortal fate.

For neither to the left or right
Is what Christ had told us that day.
Do not fall from the narrow road
And enter through the wicket gate.

1 =/= 2

1 can never equal 2. That's impossible. Except to say that 2 inches equals 5.08 centimeters, but there's a conversion formula for that. We need to relearn number theory, as a society. So we don't end up making 1=2, as it never will.

[If] you subtracted out a similar term, and unbalanced the equation, [or something like it] the equality has to be equal the whole time, for it to work. We used to know that... it was the whole premise of my High School Education. I think the Internet made people braindead.

[T]his is a qualm I have with the internet, that it's literally making people forget some of the most basic things.

{}Some people try to make that point, [like in common core math, or they call math a "Western Concept"] these days. It's a strange world we live in.

I don't know... I was taught the equation has to always be equal, hence the term equation. You see where you reduced it, it's no longer equal.

In fact, in language that's how we have knowledge, too, is when empirical facts start equating, or things in the real world start being described. Like Geometry. Not many people relate math back to geometry, but that's where our entire knowledge of number and algebra comes from, is studying shapes, and deriving axioms of logic around it. And in fact, the evidence for the Bible does this very well, in archeology, ethics and also psychology.

Tatian

[W]e have almost the entire corpus of the Gospels in the Diatesarron, and in them, from at the latest 180AD, we see statements of Christ's divinity. And he was a heretic who wrote it, but they're all quotations from the Gospels, directly. We can safely assume the Gospels are 100% perfect. He was trying to unify them, when we need them in those four separate sources, to account their witness, but it's all there, and early. And we know from that, the Gospels are highly established, as they're being referenced to, to compile the document. And Mark is the least quoted of all four.

Papias is clearly relating the “Elders” to the “Apostles” so when he qualifies “The Elder John” he can only mean the Apostle John, as why include that epithet otherwise, and not for Aristion, whom he calls both “Disciples”. Other Fragments relating Church History show that Papias may have dictated the Book of John from the very same. And Papias also authenticates the episode of the woman caught in adultery.

The Holy Bible

No Santa Clause dawns its pages
But a truth about life, without illusions.
People suffer, and especially the good.
There are very few happy portraits
In the holy scripture, but rather mourning
At every page, and war... even love is strife.
"Vanity vanity", thus let me mourn here
A little while, and hate my life.
So I may enter into a better Earth 
And better Heaven, where I can have
My sweet and fat; and holy laughter.