Testimonies - Jesus
- Thread starter aquarian1
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I remember talking to her on the phone one day and she we I'm at home and she just literally randomly asked me she said Justin if you were to die today where would you go and I said "Hell"
It's like everything that I've learned as a child of the Lord in the Bible
kicked in where I was like I'm going go to hell and I said that and immediately I
felt convicted but at at that time I didn't know what it was I was just it just I felt like my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach I just started to feel like nervous and afraid so I said:
"well what do I have to do in order to not go to hell and I don't
necessarily want to go to church."
She said:
"all you have to do is accept Jesus Christ in your life as your lord and savior and that's it you'll be saved."
and I was like scratching my head like that's that's it like I don't that
can't be it that can't be all.
We got off the phone and it was just a moment of you need to do this now so I literally kneel down on the ground at the foot of my bed
I just started just praying that Jesus would come into my heart that he would Transform Me from the inside out and make me an example to those that are around me like I really was like you know what I want to stop living this lifestyle I want to dedicate my life unto you.
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Seldom see that pattern;
go wash 7 times [7 dips LOL]in the Jordan[muddy river].
2 Kings 5 Have seen plenty of healings for free .
One Bible teacher said 7 ducks in a muddy river;
another pattern seldom seen\ 7 ducks in a row , in the muddy river.
Have seen 7 ducks in SEPT duck season/Wood duck Season
Seldom see that pattern;
go wash 7 times [7 dips LOL]in the Jordan[muddy river].
2 Kings 5 Have seen plenty of healings for free .
One Bible teacher said 7 ducks in a muddy river;
another pattern seldom seen\ 7 ducks in a row , in the muddy river.
Have seen 7 ducks in SEPT duck season/Wood duck Season
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True, a lot of healings in + out of the Bible are instant;
but like Matthew 7;7 notes ;
a] Keep on asking\
s] Keep on seeking \
k] keep on knocking\. Matthew 7;7 Amplified Bible
Matthew 7;7 NLT
I've had the LORD heal me more with those verses, than instantly ,
even though that instant healing happened some times . Thanks
In this testimony God helped him overcome his hatred and bitterness towards his step-father.
He currently plays in a music missionary which travels full-time. Though he might like to settle and have a family, in prayer the Lord tells him to keep going and he does. He trusts God and God's plan for him.
Christian youth pastor's testimony describing what led him to leave Christianity despite his nickname "Captain Christian" in high school.
Go to 4:47 to find out just how serious he was about Christianity. He doesn't say whether he was more serious than @aquarian1 but i'ld be interested to hear from anyone who is more serious about Christianity, this former youth pastor, or @aquarian1 . If this fellow was more serious than @aquarian1 , then it's very possible that within five years we will be hearing @aquarian1 's own deconstruction testimony.
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Dr. Robert Cargill was being raised Church of Christ (by Italian ex-Catholics) when at age 12 he had to have an emergency baptism to assure himself he wasn't going to burn in hell. They literally had to rush him out of bed, in tears, down to the church in the middle of the night.
A smart guy, he could have chosen a number of professions but instead used a lot of his collegiate time to get to the bottom of a lot of biblical issues managing a PhD along the way.
Is now an openly agnostic professor at Iowa State University, politically self describing as Teddy Roosevelt Bull Moose.
This sheds light on the OPs (@aquarian1) suggestion that if you just study the bible you will arrive at the OPs convictions. These kinds of stories suggest that if you really studied the bible you would just as likely, if not most likely, arrive on the shores of agnostic land.
To me, that's a good thing, agnosticism. It's the most humble path. To arrive at where I am, with a reconstructed perspective on the concepts of Jesus and Christ, you have to approach with humility, having admitted there are things about human existence you just don't know. In most cases you have to be willing to admit you have been wrong. This is because just to be having the experience of being human, you have to have already embraced wrong concepts about Christ, about life, about reality(truth), and about Self. Therefore every human has to be willing to admit they have been wrong. This is 100% of everybody that thinks they are a man or a woman. The pernicious function of faith kills the possibility of approaching reality through agnosticism because faith is ultimately a mockery of knowledge, conflating itself (conflating ignorance) with the knowledge of Christ. Faith, in it's worst expression, claims that what one believes one knows. It drips with arrogance. This closes the door to any possibility of the light of truth entering ones mind.
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Good1's Testimony
Raised Catholic. Didn't really like going to church but we had to, at least till ages 16 or 17 at which point i kept my distance as an agnostic. Age 20-22 Bible-based Fundamental Evangelical Christian. Age 22-34 Catholic by choice as an adult including an additional "catechism" course. Age 34-46 agnostic. Age 46-60 Reconstruction Christ-ist with emphasis on the priority of knowledge over faith.
Technically, i can only claim to know one thing: This is not my home.
Everything else is concordant with this with a consistency of argument.
It takes time to construct with consistency. Reconstruction is the opposite of deconstruction, which is the modern term for Christians who are taking the time to dismantle a complex frame of beliefs they had constructed before. Except reconstruction is done more carefully, with the caution of an agnostic. It's the construction of a world view as well as a self-view. Reconstruction involves a re-estimation of the self. Re-estimation, re-esteem, and re-deem and redemption are synonyms.
"This is not my home" came to me when i was 20. It was a wordless message, like mental telepathy, that just dawned upon my mind as i slept and woke up in the morning. It was just there, like the dew on the grass. It was the first time i felt a need to re-estimate (re-esteem, redeem) my self. It's not something i could have learned through any books, and till then, i had not heard of any such thing. I mean, i had not heard that my home, my place of origin, and my place of belonging, was beyond this world. That was the general weight of the message, which i will now call a seed of knowledge.
Along with the weight of the message came the feeling that the world around me, people places and things, seems a bit more ephemeral...a little more cartoonish...a little contrived...a little artificial. The sky was bluer. The grass was greener. It was generally a good feeling that came on strong and gradually faded away over the course of about three weeks.
This experience initiated a quest to know more about what "this" is, and what "home" was. It took 26 years to finally grok, what "this" and "home" were. Or maybe it just took 26 years to accept it. In hindsight, resistance to acceptance began within days. But i did take radical steps to press further down that road.
When this happened, i was playing in two different bands, both with prospects of getting paid for professional work. I was nine years into a hoped for career as a musician. One of the bands was going to play in local lounges, the other was giving free concerts just to warm up. Within days, i quit these bands and joined a local evangelical bible based church on the corner of a small town. My choice for that was partly influenced by the fact that a prior band mate had also quit music a couple years earlier and had joined this church, which was co-pastored by his older brother.
I'm only mentioning this to emphasize the potency of this, what i call a seed of knowledge, in its power to cause someone so dedicated to one direction in life, to suddenly drop everything and reprioritize in another direction, and to keep that direction until another cue ball came and collided with that direction.
What i now call a seed of knowledge, the little church on the corner called being "born again". So began my simultaneous journey of curiosity, and also a journey of resistance, non-acceptance, and fear.
By resistance and non-acceptance, for example, i mean that within some days, i let the little church on the corner tell me that i descended from Adam and Eve, at the beginning of this world. In hindsight, this clearly contradicts the weight of the seed of knowledge, which more than implied that my home preceded this world, and existed beyond it.
In this way, i felt like i could relate to Jesus, who must have felt the same thing i was feeling, or better said, knew the same thing i knew. But the longer i wandered in the little church space, the more distance and separation i felt between my experience, what i felt, what i knew, and what Jesus must have felt and knew.
I let the church teach me that Jesus comes from a world before this world, before any Adam or any Even, and exists in a world beyond this world. I, on the other hand, derived existence from this world, specifically from Adam and Eve down through my immediate parents. In this way, i allowed the little bible based church to suppress the message that i got, which, in hindsight, i was clearly not accepting. This might be why the feelings of knowing gradually slipped away over about three weeks, after which i was fully exited from my music career, and fully ensconced in a complex net of teachings, none of which were consistent with the message i had received.
For example, the so-called seed of knowledge did not contain any confirmation that the bible is the word of god and totally without any kind of error and completely true. Nor did the seed of knowledge tell me that the crucifixion of Jesus was a necessary sacrifice for me and my sins. Nor did it tell me that the god of this world was actually God, or any god that is actually Good. Nor did it tell me that the god of this world was monitoring my thoughts and actions to potentially hold them against me sometime down the road, after i die.
In these ways, i had actually strayed from the impetus of my initializing experience. At the time though, you could not have told me i had strayed, was on the broad path, and off the narrow path. I believe this is what has happened to Christianity, beginning with Jesus' own students (disciples). I believe that seeds of knowledge are distributed rather liberally, just like in the Parable Of The Sower, some to land on good ground, some on hard ground, and some to be snatched up by birds and some to be cooked under the hot sun.
Christianity, as such, is the hard ground of the heart where many people all around the world have received some initiating seed of knowledge, initially legitimate, initially powerful, which motivates them to change the whole course of their lives. But at the same time, it is a broad (popular) road, where people are motivated more by what other people thing of them, or what most other people are believing.
Christianity, as such, is a gathering place where people can help each other resist the initial weight of the message, and to gradually reject it. This is the hot sun...these are the birds which kill the seeds and steal them away. The seed is completely stolen when you can't remember anymore the import, as well as the limitations of the initial seed of knowledge.
Two or three siblings, around that same time, probably had a similar experience, and received a similar message. The whole family saw what was happening to two or thee of us and all total about eight of us left the Catholic tradition and all started going to the same kind of little bible based church, not necessarily the one i chose. If you asked them today, what was the import of the initial message/experience they had that qualified them to be "born again", i doubt they could remember. The memory has been snatched way and replaced with a complex net of contradicting messages we call Christianity. I, on the other hand, never forgot the import and the limitations of the initial experience of "knowing".
Learning stops where fear starts. I feel this is what happens to most people who allow themselves to be taught about an impending judgement with a potential hell awaiting those who don't pass some tests, to be judged after they die. At age 34 i was able to shake off this fear, which enabled me to start learning on the path of the agnostic. On that path, i felt no urgency to jump to any presumptions, or to come to any conclusions to save my life.
But let's go back to age 20 when i was settling into a career in music with two bands. I was also a seeker who could oft be found in the local library looking for the truth, somewhere in the stacks of books. I was agnostic and wondering. I was not satisfied with any explanation of "life" i had heretofore heard. So being a reader and open, i let one of my siblings hand me a book, "The Late Great Planet Earth" by Hal Lindsay, which is designed to scare the hell out of you so you say the "Sinners Prayer" at the end of the book, which i was, and which i did. The next morning i woke up with this seed of knowledge deposited into my mind, and the rest is history.
This association (the book, it's source [Christianity], the prayer and the experience) is mainly what made me assume that i could find out more about my experience by consulting people who were the most motivated to talk about Jesus. The assumption is they would be the one's who knew the most.
But there is yet another parable which describes two sons, one of which proclaims he will do his fathers will, but doesn't, and the other, who proclaims he will not do his fathers will, but eventually does.
Christianity is basically the first son, which loudly proclaims it is doing the will of the Father God. Agnostics (and atheists) are the son which says no, not doing that, not believing that, not knowing that...but eventually do. In this way, there are agnostics, atheists, and even prostitutes who will arrive in the great proverbial Kingdom even before Christians will arrive. All my siblings are like the first son, who, to this day, still reject what i'm trying to tell them. Meanwhile, i'm well on my way back home, across the land of no fear.
Let me say this more about the so-called "born again" experience. There is an experience, and there is an interpretation of the experience. The reason Christianity has grown over the years, i believe, is because there are so many legitimate experiences liberally distributed in response to any mind that can, for a moment, open itself to something new, which invites a meeting of the minds, and which admits to some sort of lost-ness.
When people report motivating experiences, they are probably speaking their truth. They probably did have an experience. It's the interpretation of the experience that starts to go astray, almost immediately, and largely out of fear. Yes fear. Any experience of the divine is likely to evoke fear if your mind is not well prepared, and especially if you immediately throw yourself in with a group of peers who all start to justify why one should be fearful of god. This would be especially true if your peers would likely stone you if you admitted that you originated before the foundation of the world, admitted you made this world, and claimed you were going back home with or without them, whether you die or not.
If the last paragraph is true, then churches really represent hiding places which tend to ameliorate the fear people feel having had some experience of the divine. These can be described as interpretation zones which assist in resisting a proper re-estimation of your self, which resist an effective re-deeming of your self, and ultimately to resist redemption.
It's for this reason that i emphasize that redemption is for Christ, not for Christians, not for people, not for any race, nor for any gender, nor for any animals, and definitely not for this world.
If you follow the import of the initial seed of knowledge which i received, you will come to the logical conclusion that you are Christ, and as such, and only as such, will be saved from everything that you appear to be, but are not. This is the truest, most potent application of the need to re-esteem, re-deem, for the ultimate redemption.
If you are willing to accept this, then any seed of knowledge which may happily fall on your good ground will be nurtured into a large tree, under which many can find shade from a hot sun. If you allow this seed to be snatched away by angry birds, you won't be able to help anyone.
What is Christ? First of all, Christ is not the Hebrew concept of Messiah. You could try to research its etymology somewhere in ancient Greek. Maybe it will imply an anointed one, maybe it won't. It's meaning, however, is hidden in plain sight, the way the word is used today, by most people: as an exclamation of astonishment!
Ultimately beyond mere words, Christ! (notice the exclamation point) is a state of being, and a Self, which will astonish any ear which hears about it, or any eye which may see it. Christ will especially astonish those who accept it, and accepting it, start to experience it. If you receive even one tiny mustard seed sized experience of the knowledge of it, this could be powerful enough to change the course of your whole life.
You can reject this Self, and wander around for decades in a dark land of fear and confusion. Or, you can accept it, and nurture it, and thrive. The consistency of logic this offers works well to heal the damaging effects of a mind burdened by the conflicting notions of cognitive dissonance. The best you can do to prepare for this is to remain agnostic, following consistency of thought and argument, until such time a seed of knowledge overwhelms your mind, points you in the right direction, and keeps you on that path.
Nurture the concept of knowledge over faith. Stay loyal to that. This will bring peace of mind, and through this peace, the mind will naturally gravitate back to its original "home".
Convoluted concepts of this Self function to "save" whatever other self you claim to be. The more seriously insane the notions about Christ, the more those other selves that you claim to be will be "saved". This is what current versions of Christianity will help you to do. Yes, you will be resurrected, but not as you expected. You expected to have a new, glorified body that will find itself plugged somewhere into yet another hierarchy, hopefully a higher class in the hierarchy. Instead, you will appear again as yet another self, yet another character on the stage of the world as yet another actor.
In this way, there is a converse relationship between Christ and all these additional selves. Try to save these other selves (through convoluted concepts about Christ) and you lose Christ. Save Christ and you lose these other selves. It's a mutually exclusive relationship which does not coexist together. You can have the experience of one or the other, but you cannot have both. You can't be Calvin the Carpenter, and Christ at the same time.
So you have to make a choice. You can't be a man, nor can you be a woman. The choice is between reality (truth, knowledge) and fantasy (imagination, faith). Reality offers Christ, and only Christ. Imagination (faith) offers more than Christ. More than Christ manifests as the opposite of everything along a continuum of distinction, with every imaginable combination in between.
Fantasy offers you this whole world. If you do manage to gain this whole world, perhaps through day trading support and resistance zones on indices, you will lose the experience of the world of Christ. The choice is between temptation and real happiness in a world that actually functions. A world that offers both (including opposites) to get more will forever be disfunctional . It can never be a "home".
Those who are truly " born again" recognize their origins in/from a world of Spirit, which precedes and surpasses a material world of shapes, forms, and limitations. Anyone who won't accept this interpretation will indeed be "born again", right back here into a dark world of denial. Either way, you must be, and will be, born again. You will either stay, as sons of Adam and Eve, or daughters of Darwin, or you will go home, to your proper birth place.
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