JJ's Story

That's an incredible testimony, curiousity! How long ago did you come to know Christ, and where would you say you are now spiritually compared to when you first knelt at the alter?

Originally posted by junglejake
That's an incredible testimony, curiousity! How long ago did you come to know Christ, and where would you say you are now spiritually compared to when you first knelt at the alter?

Thanks for taking time to read my treatise, JJ, and am glad you were impressed at God's power in it.

It was (soon to be) 34 years ago, and I would say the difference is about what you'd expect, though maybe not so "finished" as you'd think I should be after that long, lol. Sorry to say I backslid for 5 years about mid-way through the journey and so lost a lot of time and growth in that way. I give thanks that He did see fit to work on me to return. That is a story in itself, I'll tell you!

I would say that I am greatly blessed, thoroughly loved, and honored far beyond my worthiness by His great love and precious grace. I have a ministry, I have my family around me, I have a fair amount of financial blessing, I have found a wonderful Pastor who is also a great teacher and am completing what was lacking of my understanding of Scripture and how to apply it to my life in leaps and bounds.

Having read several of your posts, and your e-mails, I can say that I feel I know you pretty well, and that you are also growing rapidly in the things of the Lord. So, then, maybe we are at the same place spiritually. Or at least on the same page, lol.

May the Lord bless and keep you, making His face to shine on yours until the two of you are One likeness!

this is a lovely thread. Insomuch that it GOD is a personal individual thing. The experience of GOD is different for everyone.

I spose I could do a summary of how and why... promise I will TRY to make it succinct!!


hmm right, grew up with a lot of violence. um probably about the age of 8 I went to sunday school. I was a loner, even at that age. There was a lady who gave me a kids bible (I still have it) Her name was Margaret. She was very special because of all the violence and other things I guess at that age I didnt think too much of anything and I certainly didnt trust people. She befriended me and even though circumstances as they were, I didnt keep up with sunday school, I would visit her. I wasnt happy with the Baptist church...I remember my Mum came to see my Bro & Sis get baptised and they were judging her. So I was like GRRR. And I could see the people who were only good on Sundays Oh but I had these books called Uncle Arthurs Bed Time Stories and I just loved em ... I think those stories lit a spark of hope in my heart.

So went away from the church thinking it was all BS and I hadnt experienced anything spec personally with GOD at that time. All I had was this lady called Margaret. I think she was the absolute first person that really was kind to me, yanno when you know someone likes you? Its that kind of thing. I felt loved anyway.

I grew up and moved on. Lets skip about 10 years...hmm another 5 years. lol
I was very anti church after how I saw the churchies treated my Mum and the superficial people there. I really dont know exactly when it happened, but I just reconnected. I dont know whether I died and woke up one morning and then it happened but it feels like that. But more and more things were happening and I felt GOD all the time. Very weird. I dont go to a church at all. I spose I dont like people in my life. But I am very content with GOD; my life just as it is now.

I dont want anything at all. Just very content and peaceful.

ha ha so much for some profound moment

hmm na cant think of anything profound...it just happened.



edit: woo hoo I remembered when...

I went to bed one night; things were bad...anyway, I went to bed and did my little prayer but I was crying and saying sorry to GOD for being such a failure. Well, that night GOD spoke to me and told me I was doing just fine I went to bed and my heart was dead and when I woke up, it was alive.... thanks to GOD!









[edit on 29-7-2006 by NJE777]

Originally posted by junglejake
Deciding to combat him where he seemed to stand, I picked up a Bible. I knew it was riddled with contradictions (as I was so apt to point out to people), so I had to find them and point out the fallibility of the Bible to enlighten my uncle. I figured I'd read just a little at a time, and started at the very front of the new testament with the book of Matthew, the tax collector. Four hours later, I finished Matthew with tears streaming down my eyes, wondering why I would ever want to take this message away from someone. I began to believe in a God, but I didn't believe in the Deity of Christ.

You read the Bible and then magically you just changed your mind about the whole thing? Really? You actually read the bible and found the vast majority of its contents to be good? Can I ask you, where you high at the time? This is mind boggling!

I must say, because of this, I do not believe your story at all. It sounds to me like you've just made the entire thing up to prove a point. "The once atheist turned Christ lover". Your story makes absolutely no sense at all. I don’t believe you ever possessed a mind capable of critical thinking.

Sorry,

LurkerBeast

Not a problem; I expect I would have reacted in the same way. Looking back, as well, there is no way I can explain it, either, except to say that God captured my heart in that moment and let me feel His love. Sadly, you will have to take, or not take, my word on it, as there is no way I could prove to you via ATS who I was vs. who I am today...Unless, of course, you graduated highschool from my school around '97 and are going to the 10 year reunion and see me and remember who I was

Originally posted by junglejake
Not a problem; I expect I would have reacted in the same way. Looking back, as well, there is no way I can explain it, either, except to say that God captured my heart in that moment and let me feel His love. Sadly, you will have to take, or not take, my word on it, as there is no way I could prove to you via ATS who I was vs. who I am today...Unless, of course, you graduated highschool from my school around '97 and are going to the 10 year reunion and see me and remember who I was

I liked this response. Thank you.

Originally posted by LurkerBeast
I liked this response. Thank you.

LB,

Coming back here, from time to time. I appreciate a soft honest reply from anyone in here. Like this one from you LB.

Thank you being kind to not only us who read but also to this OP. You certainly got my attention today in here.

[edit on 8/15/2007 by Jesus-Is-Real]

I'm new to this site, but I found this thead quite by accident. I am finishing a book about the 36 righteous men, and found this thread in a web search. Wow. What a great read this thread is. I came to Christ, almost 18 years ago after the birth of my baby girl. I felt Jesus had given me a special gift when I held my beauitful baby in my arms. I dedicated my life to her and my Lord and Savior through the assistance of a relative. I have loved him since. Many Blessings Lori

It's good that they allow an openly Christian to be a moderator on a conspiracy forum such as ATS.

Christians get such bad press these days......it's all about the muslims, atheists, etc. Anything goes these days, as long as it's not Christian. Christians are 'fair game'......but don't upset the muslims, or the atheists and unbelievers.......no sir!!


All power to you!

After high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so I decided to just enroll at the local community college and take GECs. The classes that had the most profound impact on me were my introductory philosophy classes. I loved whenever the topic of God came up; it was the most interesting to me of all the topics we studied. My teacher was a staunch atheist, and he quickly spread his ideologies to me. Everything he said made so much sense to me, and after I finished my second philosophy class with him, I was equipped with tons of arguments both “disproving” (or so I thought) theism, and supporting atheism. I was sure there was no God, and that anyone who believed was a delusional idiot. Didn’t they realize that only what science tells us there is, is all that exists? Couldn’t they see that nothing should be believed without scientific evidence?

Several months later, I transferred to Ohio State University, planning to major in philosophy so I could better “enlighten” all the delusional theists I knew. My first philosophy class at OSU was an elective, philosophy of religion. I was ready for it to be pretty boring since I already knew there was no God, and was pretty confident that I had heard all the arguments for theism.

But something unexpected happened that quarter. As it turned out, my philosophy teacher at community college had conveniently left out some of the strongest arguments in support of theism from our curriculum. We read philosophers like Alvin Plantinga, James Sennett, JP Moreland, Doug Geivett, Victor Reppert, William Lane Craig, PK Moser, Michael M. Murray, and Richard Swinburne. Who knew there were so many brilliant philosophers who believed in God, and were Christians?

I became seriously intrigued by several of these people, and began reading more of their essays on my own time apart from class. Alvin Plantinga had shown me why belief in God could be properly basic and warranted, and why scientism and evidentialism were completely arbitrary metaphysical positions, and were moreover self-refuting! JP Moreland presented the first compelling defense of the cosmological argument I’d heard. Michael M. Murray’s essay “Heaven and Hell” convinced me that the traditional Christian doctrine of hell was not inconsistent with the concept of an all-loving God. I began to know in my head that God probably existed, but I didn’t know anything yet about Jesus.

At this point, anytime someone mentioned Jesus, I felt seriously intrigued. Who was this man? Was he just a fictional storybook character, or did he actually exist? What did he teach, and why were people so captivated by him?

Finally, one night I just began to weep without really knowing why. I prayed that if God were really there, and if Christianity were true, would he please just show me somehow? I truly wanted to know God, and know more about this man Jesus who people seemed to love so much.

The next day I went to school having mostly forgotten about my prayer the night before. I really wasn’t expecting anything to happen, but that day my life changed. When I went to my philosophy of religion class, my teacher hurried through the day’s lecture and told us that since it was the last day of class, he would tell us his take on everything we discussed. Fully expecting him to defend atheism, I was pretty interested.

Long story short, it turned out he was a Christian. First, he undermined atheism. Then he defended theism. Then Christianity, and all the historical, factual evidence for Jesus, universally agreed upon by both Christian and non-Christian scholars. And lastly he told us how we, too, could become Christians. I felt the truth of his words, the Holy Spirit truly speaking through this man, and I cried. I knew God had heard my prayer, and for once I was not the last bit skeptical. I had never been more certain of anything in my life. God was real, Jesus was real, and the Bible is true.

How I found God

Like the OP I started out being a devoted anti-Christian atheist, mocking Christians for their gullability and ignorance, confronting them with evolution and big bang etc. Science was my religion and believing in creation and sacrifice simply didn't do the thing for me. Until many years later when I lived in Oslo, the capital of Norway and found the city's library. Interrested in science and especially geometry I searched the computer for books on the development of geometry, and what I found changed my whole way of looking at life. I found a book called Ancient Geometry and I started reading about the pyramids, arts, Pythagorean math and mystics, astrology, crystals and similar subjects and I realised that our perception of reality, converted into math, were simply just observations of phenomena nature had been filled with since day one. I had also borrowed a book on numerology, together with the bible and the apocrypha, the Egyptian Book of the Dead and so on. I searched all mystic subjects in order to find patterns that would tell me something about the evolution of science.

Then something remarkable happened. I saw a great light which surrounded me and stopped me from seeing what was behind the light. Out of the light came a face and it spoke to me saying things I couldn't understand. Then I saw my own mirror image and then I saw what I believed was the universe as it looks from the outside. It was like an hourglass or a infinity mark in shape and our reality existed along the edge of this shape. Other realities moved other places along the edges of the hourglass. A voice told me that these realities sometimes inter connected or met in the middle of the hourglass, where the lines of infinity crosses, and that it was at these occurances what we have come to refer to as angels and gods entered our reality. The light dissapeared and I was sitting alone in my room feeling completely lost. Then I reached for a pencil and a piece of paper and I started writing like crazy. The world came out like from a bottomless well just pooring out like water. When I was finished I had written a bunch of pages with what seamed to be prophecies about everything from my own destiny to a great Russian conspiracy involving the son of a certain Russian politican who would be captured by the Russian mafia and what do you know, a while later that particular story was on the radio. Different names, but the story was the same. This frightened me so much that I later burnt all those pages, fearing my own destiny which involved being killed in a great world war that was to come uppon the earth soon.

I then started reading the Bible to find more answers, and I didn't sleep for four days, until I had read through the whole bible. Suddenly everything made sence and I started believing in God as the creator of all things, who through his Spirit contacts us, waking us up from sleep.

Jesus was just a prophet and a teacher in my eyes, his mother being a virgin was an astrological referance and his twelve disciples were the twelve constellations along the eccliptic and so on. The crucifiction was also an allegory of a solar eclipse in my mind allthough I believed it had happened the way it was written, it too was astrological, and I linked him to the constellations in the aphex of heaven, especially Ursa Major and Ursa Minor and the constellation I saw emerge around the constellation Draco. Draco was part of a bigger constellation and it looked like a king sitting on a throne with a child in his lap. I came to know this constellation as the Father and I connected it to God and found many referances to these constellations in the Bible, both OT and NT. Psalms explained that God was sitting on a throne in the North of Heaven. Acts told me that Stephen saw the Father sitting on a throne with the Son of Man to his right. Exactly what I saw in heaven in the near vicinity of the polar star. This was how I found God. I saw it as my mission to reshape heaven to fit with scripture and I wiped the Dragon from the sky leaving the Father in glory and splendor in the North like the Bible said. I became concerned with how there seams to be a secret agenda transphering the events of astrology into real life, where humans were sacrificed in order to materialise these secret societies' doctrines. What I found was that there were stories all over the Middle-East discribing astrological events materialised on earth with real people and events taking place. Had I found the very Truth here? This realisation made me cry and Jesus entered my conceous as more than a mere man. He was the person who would sit down where the Father had been sitting, and there would be a new Son of Man, and they would rule during the thousand year Sabbath prophecied to come about soon. I am awaiting a changing of the guards so to speak, and I believe it will be the greatest thing humankind has and will ever see.

I think I am naturaly someone who questions authority.
I was probubly always a christian but I would have to judge everything that anyone told me, concening my religion with sceptacism.
I guess it was my own form of heresy detection.
I would have to filter every bit of new information against what I already knew.
If I ran into something that I could not figure out, I would go to books and start researching it.
I have always been this way.
I have often been accused of having only an intelectual form of religion.
Ok, so what other kind of religion is there?
An emotional religion?
I reject that.
I am a human being and I can not help but be an emotional animal.
I have had some great emotional experiences from having some of my intelectual problems cleared up for me.
Everyone is different and everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
You can not judge another for the role they play in the spiritual battlefield.
Many have tryed to put me down as a legalist and a pharisee.
But, when it comes down to an argument with someone about theology, my critics will slink into the shadow and leave me out there, alone to deal with it.
I am no expert but I have always tryed to associate myself with people who are, and I usually do not find it so hard to be accepted by them.
I have always taken my resposibility seriously, to use what talent I have.
I also understand the consequences for leading people astray.
At one time I was going to church five times a week because I would accept any invitation by friends to come to whatever services.
I had a girlfriend, at one time, who was the one who got up front on sunday and lead the service and did the readings and played guitar and sang.
She was very talented and that was what she was good at, but she knew almost nothing about theology or even normal chuch practices, as far as church law goes.
Right now I am just being very anoying on ATS, for lack of any thing else to do.
Today, I am going to set up a non-profit organization for saving money on mailing out religious books to any one who wants them.
We can save a lot on postage. You can get a non-profit reduced rate at the post office.

[edit on 10-4-2008 by jmdewey60]

its late and im tired from being at the feria all night so ill give the abreviated version.

my parents died when i was young and i was sent to america. while there, i met a man named juan who took me in. he was religious but i soon found him to be a hypocrite. i started to study the bible because i found it hard to trust the priests of the church i would go to. at the same time, i also studyed evolution, because i wanted the truth, and if the bible was the truth, it could hold up against scrutiny. i eventually met up with a baptist man named james. he was much older so i would help him with thing he needed. i started to talk to him about the bible and tried to learn as much as i could.

around this point i started to loose interest in evolution. honestly, it just didnt make sense to me. i also met up with a young girl named melanie. she was a JW. i was about 18 at the time and she was around 16 i believe. it blew me away how much she knew. i was also impressed at how she always used the bible. when i saw that certain things the church teachs wasn´t in the bible, it cleared up alot of contradictions i saw with the bible (ie. why would jesus talk about resurrection if the soul was immortal and cant die? how can god be love if he sends people to hell? etc etc)

unfortunatly it also showed me just how bad ive been. it made me realise that im probably beyond redemption. i try my best on the chance of mercy. so in a way, i havent found christ. but im still looking

I grew up in a decidedly Christian home and went to church regularly, but church bored me for the most part and I really just didn’t give spiritual things any thought. I was shy as well, so I would make excuses to try to get out of youth group church functions. Yet all this time I “mentally agreed” (believed) the Bible’s teachings.
Whenever I would try to read the Bible (which was rare), it actually kinda creeped me out and I didn’t really get it. The Bible itself says: “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” -1 Corinthians 2:14. Also, when I would hear certain preachers, I would get very uneasy, I believe because I was confronted with the coming judgment of God and saw my sin.
During my Junior year of high-school, things began to change inside of me. I began to sense a constant conviction and remorse over my wrong ways of living. I tolerated and practiced things that I knew were wrong, and I simply knew in the core of my being that I did not really have a relationship with God. I knew I was living a double life: on one hand looking like a Christian, on the other hand ignoring God and “secretly” enjoying sin. I also distinctly knew something was missing in me, keeping me from God. I now know what was missing was repentance. Repentance involves turning from serving self to serving God, and is something we must do continually! Until one does this, a true relationship with God is impossible. Scripture says: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” -2 Peter 3:9. Jesus’ first command was to repent and believe! (Mark 1:15).
Finally: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed” –Romans 2:4-5.
The Bible says that even Satan and demons believe in Jesus and God the Father. Does that mean that they have decided to serve Him instead of themselves?
One day, I went with a friend to a Christian meeting to hear an evangelist. He calmly and humbly told me of some astonishing miracles he had personally witnessed. As he spoke, I realized that I believed what he said. Then he took it further, he pointed out that Jesus is either 1. A complete liar. 2. A lunatic, stating that only by Him can we come to God. 3. He is Lord, spoke truth, and deserves our complete obedience and devotion. As I saw this, I was confronted with my sin and my need to give my life to Christ, not simply to believe facts about him. The Holy Spirit was strongly at work in my heart, I could actually feel Him. And in spite of my fears, I surrendered. As I finally committed to obey God, I felt a burden lift and a peace wash over me that I had never felt before, and that has never left since.
Immediately my life changed. Things that I used to enjoy I now hated. Things that I didn’t used to enjoy I now cherished. The Bible was now a book of life and nourishment to me, not a strange, dry, foreign book. I found myself wanting to pray, wanting to worship God, and loving people I used to mock and make fun of. I found life, and I found a relationship with the God who made me; a relationship of pure, unconditional love. A relationship that up to that point had been made impossible due to my unrepentance, even though all along God desired me to come to Him! I began to see clear answers to prayer, and I no longer wondered or hoped; I knew I was saved. It was and is the greatest thing in the world, something I too often take for granted.


[edit on 15-9-2008 by tolovethetruth]

Thank God for all the testimonies here. Its a blessing. I just read all the testimonies. And I see that I am not the only one going through the things I been through. I am going to put my testimony down maybe here or in the religion, faith, and Theology section. I don't know where to start or how to explain everything. So it will take some time. God bless and thank you for all the testimonies?? and thank you Jungle ( or JJ) for if it wasn't for you I would never have seen this thread. LOl thanks