My parents were not much into going to church but my paternal grandparents dragged my four brothers and I into church whenever possible. I went to Sunday School and sat through countless sermons – all the while wishing I were out playing baseball or doing something fun. I had better things to do on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings then attending church services. Thinking back, I am glad I did attend. Some of it did sink in. A seed was planted.
I learned all the Bible stories, you know, Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah’s flood, Moses parting the Red Sea, Jesus and the cross, and so on, not knowing sure what to believe. Because at the same time my school science classes were telling me something very different about who I was and how I got here. The schools pretty much had me convinced I evolved from a fish, which evolved from something even lower in a warm slimy sludge. They had me convinced I was a product of random chance events and no creator was involved or needed. I did not see much of a future beyond the grave. I did not feel good about this, but who was I to argue with scientific facts!
In my early 20’s (a long time ago), I began to question everything I was taught. I was torn between what I was taught in church and what I was taught in school. I decided someone had lied to me and I did not like it. I still did not fully understand the whole Christianity thing and why Jesus had to die on a cross. Nevertheless, I needed to know the truth about my existence. Was I the product of a series of random accidents, or did a Supreme Being place me on this earth for a reason? I wanted to know and had to know. I had a void inside that I could not explain. I had to know why I was here and what the future held for me. This set me on a quest for the truth.
The first thing I did was to go to a local bookstore and search for the “truth” in the occult section. Surely I can find all the answers to life on these shelves I thought. Believe it or not I did, or at least the answers started there. Right there, in the middle of all the astrologers, soothsayers, and modern day prophets, was a book titled “The Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey. I bought the book, read it, and it completely changed the way I looked at life. I knew I had an exciting future – an exciting eternal future, if any of this were true.
After reading that book, I sat down and read Genesis. An unexplainable chill came over me as I realized that I was reading actual history and not ancient myths. It actually frightened me a bit, knowing without a shadow of a doubt the events really happened. I bought another one of Hal’s books titled “The Liberation of Planet Earth”, that went into great detail of who Jesus was and is, and why God had to become a man and die on a cross. Another chill came over me as when I knew it was a historical fact that Jesus actually rose from the dead. I finally understood God’s plan – from creation to eternity. The lights in my head suddenly came on. It all made sense.
I then set out on a journey to study everything I could find on atheistic evolution (the type of evolution taught in public schools in the USA), and creation. All the living things around me took on new meaning. I looked at them differently. I could look at a bird or ant and I could see incredible design and purpose. I studied, in great detail, the cardiovascular and vision systems of humans. I studied the workings of the simplest life form, the cell. I concluded the chances of atheistic evolution being the process of which life evolved on earth was absolute zero, not mention the origin of life springing up from non-life in some slimy sludge also being absolute zero.
No, I am not a freak of nature, but one who has an exciting destiny in eternity, and placed here for a reason by a loving Creator. Since that day in the bookstore, I have been on an incredible and exciting journey and I have never looked back.
