How lost I Was

As I continue telling you of my renewed Bible studies and of my understanding I ask that you remember that I wasn’t a Christian before my Tree incident. I was not an atheist either. I was just a regular guy living in America doing what all Americans do; which is pretty much being self absorbed in my own life. What I mean by that is I did the things I was interested in doing. I studied what I wanted to study. Did the things I wanted to do. Decided for my own self what is right and what is wrong in life. A patriot, a business man, an investor into stocks, somewhat athletic as I exercised a little with weights and practiced the martial art called American Kenpo under Professor Joe Doyle and Master Richard Planas (who also goes by the name “Huk”Planas). 
I wasn’t a bad guy then nor am I now. I didn’t drink but a couple of beers a year, do not smoke cigarettes or marijuana, no drugs of any kind. I also do not go out chasing skirts, and always felt white lies were okay if you were not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings but as a rule do not lie. Not a gambler either. As a married man I was enjoying my marriage and was happy to not have had any children. (I have been concerned about the economy of America for many years, long before President Trump became our Nation’s President and just didn’t want the responsibility of raising children in the world I grew up in.) I like to read and study just about everything. I have a nice library and have spent hundreds of hours searching the internet exploring just about every interest I have had. Also I had no debt and was not strapped financially. No sickness, no cancer, no heart attack, no nothing. Everything was just fine in my life.

Then came the Tree Incident and changed everything.

I had read my Bible before. But did not read it with the power of Grace which comes only from God. No I simply read it for myself. I had had some religion as a child, my parents had the family in a Methodist church in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. I believed in God, we called him Jesus Christ not God the Father. I knew the Christmas story and what Easter was all about. And I knew that the Bible was suppose to be read from beginning to end. I tried many times to do just that; read it from beginning to end. But when I read it I skipped over large sections of it, I just looked for the interesting stories that I could find, as I was not interested in connecting the dots of history. Certainly I did not cross reference the stories of the Bible with secular history and archaeology. That didn’t happen until after my tree.

To my way of thinking, the Bible was nothing more than the world’s oldest and first school book. A history book put together by Israel that taught the people of Israel where they came from and what their forefathers had done to get the Jews to where they where some 2,000 years ago. The Bible was outdated of course because I knew even the Jewish people did not live that way in my day and age. Since I wasn’t a Jew the old testament just didn’t matter to me anyway. Everything in the old testament was simply made up in my opinion. Written to move the Jewish people into the direction the Jewish government wanted them to move. Just that simple. 

None of that heroic stuff listed in the old testament ever happened. I knew that. Look around people, I would say, have you ever witness such crazy stuff today? No, of course not, that’s because it isn’t true. We have cameras and recorders and satellites in the sky. If there was a heaven we would have found it by now. There was no burning Bush, no crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites,  no walking sticks that turned into snakes when thrown onto the ground. The plaques of Eygpt? Never happened. I did not believe any of that stuff. I was willing to bet my life on it.

The new testament wasn’t much better for me, Jesus just seemed to be a teacher of good and he bucked the government of the Jews, so he had to die. Of course he was buried and some of his followers found out where he was placed, stole his body out of the tomb, and now everyone in the world believed he had risen from the dead. Yeah, right. If anybody believed that then I had some swamp land in the desert I want to sell ya. What about all those years between when he was twelve and than thirty? Where was he, what was he doing, why didn’t we hear about that stuff? Seems to me if he was the son of God and was around for thirty years we would read a lot more about his earlier life. What’s with this sudden showing up in Judah and claiming he was Messiah? Seems to me he would have some notoriety long before he turned some water into wine. If he even did that. . . 

And who in their right mind would ever believe a single word out of the mouth of the Apostle Paul? A radicalized Jew who believed his religion and government was always right. A murderer, and a man who self admitted he was like a chameleon, he would become in personality any type of person necessary to convince others of his beliefs. He claimed to be proud of his Jewish heritage yet ultimately changed sides of his loyalty, becoming like a Christian only after he was rejected by the Jewish men of the synagogues. They even stoned him for heaven’s sake. They knew he was a fraud. Of course the story on the road to Damascus was all made up. Paul made it up to explain why he switch sides to the Christian team. I figured he was so hungry for fame and fortune that when the Jews didn’t give him the notoriety he craved, he switch sides. So much of the new testament was written by Paul, who could believe it. Fact is, whenever any of my Christian friends mentioned the Apostle Paul or any of his writing I would immediately think a lot less of that person. Weak minded they were. Yes Paul had won some converts to “his” Gospel, but only a fool would believe in him and I wasn’t buying it. I was so complete sold on my point of view, that even after my tree incident, the Apostle Paul and his writings were still held suspect in my minds eye. His writing were the most difficult for me to sit down and read!

Believe in the bible? I could not bringing myself to do it. In fact, I used to tell people if they ever saw me out preaching the Bible then they would know I was slipping into dementia. It would be time for them to seriously consider sending to a home for the elderly. Because I would be losing my mind and going senile.

Of course all that I wrote about above was going on with me before I had my Tree Incident. Now I know God is real and His Son is real, Heaven and Hell are real and true too. (If your new to my blogging, know that I have written about my experience with God when I was out harvesting one dead Ash tree. Go to my blog site and catch up on what I am writing about before you judge what I have written here.)  And now I recognize what an idiot I have been.

Please do not take anything I have written herein out of context. I would hate to think people were misreading my words and using my words to convince others that God is not real. You see that is what I did when I read my Bible without having the power of Grace in my life.  As it was I took everything in the Bible out of context. I misunderstood the text, misquoted the text, quoted the scriptures out of order, and read into the scriptures my own bias opinions. All of which lead me to false conclusions. However, I believed I was right and I carried that conviction almost all of my adult life.  Easily for over 50 years of my life I believed I was right!  I thought I knew deep down in my soul that the entire Bible was just a con setup by religious people. These religious people were out to separate a fool from his money and nothing more. I was not going to be one of those fools.

But my LORD showed me in His unique way that I was a fool for not studying His Word.

Thank you My LORD.