12/18/08
Oh my goodness, Undf!!! Ha! I can't believe it is EIGHT YEARS to the month since you replied to my above post, and I NEVER saw it until now! So sorry I missed it years ago, and Thank you!!
I was in the middle of replying to a 2007 thread where you replied to me, and I wondered if you believed in the rapture, so I did another google for that, and came upon this thread, lol.
I am so glad to see you believe in the rapture, and pre-trib at that! And I can't believe how in Dec. 2002 - about one year after I began lurking here -- how "in the dark" I still was (per the above post). Wow. Things changed fast in the ensuing years as far as scriptural wisdom and understanding went. All of the questions I asked you above, I learned for myself over the next few years after that, and it was so EXCITING! One "blast of light" after another. ;-) In this order...
2003 - The "Lie" of Replacement Theology + The Feasts of the Lord, etc. -- How the Lord fulfilled the first four already and will fulfill the last three when He returns... God's timing, God's calendar, God's seasons, etc. It was so exciting. And to understand "literal" vs. "allegorical" interpretation of scripture and prophecy. It was so easy to see things correctly/clearly by simply "removing" the lie of Replacement Theology. So the earthly Kingdom for Israel, the 1,000 year reign, the 144,000 Jewish virgin male witnesses, the Two Witnesses, the Woman in Rev. 12 (Israel), etc. etc. vs. the Heavenly Hope, the Body of Christ, the rapture, etc.
2003 - MIRACLE, FREEDOM , Fall 2003, I was freed from bondage to a miserable 14-years-long relationship w/prior b/f! in a "miraculous" way (anytime I get to hear the audible voice of the Lord is a miracle to me! It had only happened ONCE in my life previously, 24 years previously, as a matter of fact). Now I was FREE and my conscience was clear AT LAST and I took off like a rocket! ;-) And at 50-51 years old at that. It's never too late to 'start over'!
2004 - PRE-TRIB RAPTURE... I "held off" making it "my own" as I didn't want to learn later it wasn't so, so I "held off" a year or so on purpose, but by Fall of 2004 I was totally convinced and absolutely grabbed hold of it full-force and haven't let go since and never will 'til the Lord comes for his saints! ;-D
2005, early in the year - THE TRINITY -- I got sick of not "understanding" it -- old leftover WT hang-ups, so one day I thought, Just ask the Lord to SHOW ME! And within a few days or at the most a week, I was blessed with a scriptural answer that TOTALLY made sense to ME, MY BRAIN --the answer was just for ME, PERFECT for ME -- and I knew w/o a doubt it was the answer to my prayer. I totally "got" the Trinity! It was fantastic! (From a Messianic Jewish site I had read re: Deut. 6:4 -- Famous verse WT uses to try to DISPROVE the Trinity actually PROVES it! -- "The LORD our God is ONE (COMPOSITE, Hebrew: echad) LORD!" )
2006 - PAULINE **GRACE** GOSPEL!! It was actually November or December 2005 when I came upon an article by Miles J. Stanford that literally felt like "scales fell off my eyes" when reading it. It actually FELT like that, no joke. My heart puttered with excitement it was so awesomely described. But then later I remembered an article by David Cloud that poo-poo'd "hyper dispensationalism," and I didn't know if what I had read by Stanford was that or not? So then I got bummed out and pulled back for awhile until I could learn more (but I could never forget that "scales falling off the eyes" feeling). But the Lord doesn't give up on us so easy as we do ourselves. By March 2006 my Christian channel went digital and I could no longer see the channel w/o getting cable, so I got basic cable and not only got that channel back, but a 2nd Christian channel to boot! And there was a Bible teacher on that 2nd channel I had never heard of, a simple down-home older fellow, and I started watching. He takes the Bible verse by verse from beginning to end and starts all over again (Les Feldick). Well, guess what, TOTAL PAULINE GRACE from top to bottom, inside out and backwards: GRACE GRACE GRACE GRACE! = "GRACE + NOTHING!" as he is so famous for saying. I totally "got" what TOTAL GRACE meant!
2006 - JESUS IS JEHOVAH -- August to be exact. The Holy Spirit put a "burden" on my spirit... it went on for two weeks straight, day and night, I actually felt SO GRIEVED that I had "wasted" so many years in WT-Land getting to know "Jehovah" and not "Jesus"... and even though I never said it outloud, this thought was grieving over and over in my spirit those two weeks, "Wouldn't it be great if Jesus WAS Jehovah and then that would mean I actually KNEW JESUS ALL ALONG!!!" ;-) That was on a Friday, the end of the two week grieving, and I flipped on the TV to the Christian channel, and at **THAT INSTANT** I heard my fav Bible teacher (Les/see above) say, "JESUS IS JEHOVAH." !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I thought I would shout for joy and fall over on the floor at the same time! WHAT TIMING!!! Only God and the Holy Spirit make PERFECT TIMING events like that happen! I had NEVER heard ANYBODY EVER say that on Christian TV in the prior 4-8 years I had been watching (4 years very part time, 4 years after that full time). To say the least, I was ecstatic and KNEW God had set the whole thing up, the grieving burden, the thoughts, the answer/confirmation! Of course later I learned all the scriptural reasons that is so, but for THAT MOMENT, that was ALL the CONFIRMATION I needed!
Who needs a "Progressive ORG" when you have a PROGRESSIVE PERSONAL LORD to teach you as you are ready? ;-)
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And, if interested, here's one more story for Undf... it will take LONGER to describe...
YEAR UNKNOWN -- It was somewhere in time after late 2004 when I began cleaning out my file cabinets from a lifetime of papers/files, etc. (including throwing out all the tons of WT lit that had been in the utility room for years) and it was also sometime after I was studying along with the Feldick Bible classes on TV which I began doing around Spring of 2006 and had learned about GRACE. But at some point in time, I had another of those "Holy Spirit burden/grieving spells" again. I now knew about GRACE but was grieving about...
When was I really saved? Was I saved in the old days BEFORE I met the JWs? (Believe it or not, back in December 1976, after searching for several years, I saw some Christian tracts in the post office and took one home, read it, got on my knees in my apt. living room, and prayed the "sinner's prayer." There were no angels singing nor any "liquid love" flowing that I could sense, so I didn't think it "worked" and I felt "rejected." I expected to be be a "new person" instantly, per the tract, to FEEL different, etc. But I didn't. (In that way I think Christian tracts can be misleading. I took it literally. I didn't understand what "new creation" meant at the time).
Then, the VERY NEXT MONTH, January 1977, which was ONE MONTH after saying that Sinner's Prayer in Dec. 1976, was when I met my FIRST JW ever, a fellow workmate. ;-/ I did not "join up" with them at that time, it would be two years later. But he gave me a Biblle and a Truth book and the "Make Sure" book.
So somewhere around 2006-2007 I was terribly bothered as to why I had ever ended up with the JWs?
**Was it because of unbelief when I thought I had been rejected by God after the sinner's prayer, and thought "There must be more to it than this Sinner's Prayer"?
**Or did I end up with them because I really WAS saved at that time and the Devil came along with a cult within ONE MONTH to snatch me away?
**Or did I myself "open the door" and let him in? Was it my fault for lack of belief in the prayer I had said?
**Or had the Lord wanted me to end up w/JWs for whatever purpose? (I thought all these years later: One sure-fire way to appreciate GRACE later is to have been in a LEGALISTIC religion FIRST! If anybody needs Grace at this stage in life, it is definitely me.)
All these things went back and forth in my head for some time. It was a drag, too. Had I always been saved since 1976? Or was I only saved in the past few years of the decade of 2000?
Back to 2004 -- While throwing out old letters from those file cabinets I found a letter I had typed in June 1979 to a highschool g/f after having been reading the Bible steady since March of that year '79 (it had been a "Jesus movie" at Easter time 1979 that prompted me to pick up that Bible for the first time and start reading it, all by my lonesome. In the movie they kept saying, Sanhedrin, and I had no idea what it meant. I had no reference books around, so I figured, GO TO THE SOURCE, and I started reading in Matthew and didn't stop that week until I got to the end of Revelation. I said to myself, It doesn't matter if you don't understand something, just keep reading (I didn't know about asking the HS for guidance in those days.) And it didn't matter because I was ECSTATIC anyway just from the Word itself, and was totally HOOKED! I couldn't believe ALL THESE THINGS are IN THIS BOOK, and I NEVER KNEW IT!!!! Two Thousand Years THIS BOOK has been laying around and NOBODY TOLD ME what was in it!!!!)
But in that June 1979 letter to the g/f I had witnessed to her about the Bible stuff I was learning with TONS of scriptures. I couldn't believe how many scriptures I knew and used in such a short period of time -- I used to write them out incessantly on index cards and had them plastered all over the apt. -- But at the top of the letter I had typed out a prayer I had written previously on pink paper and had kept in a "Good News" (Phillips) Bible for a few years by that time. The original pink paper version was nowhere to be found by 2004 but the later typed version of that prayer was on the top of that June 1979 letter, so I saved the FIRST PAGE of that very lengthy letter but threw out the rest of the pages in 2004. I hated to do it because of so many scriptures, but unfortunately they were interspersed with WT teaching as I also had begun reading their Truth book later that Spring which the workmate two years earlier had given me.
Now fast forward to 2006 or maybe even 2007 during the "grieving" over "when was I ever really saved? was I saved?" etc., and I AGAIN came across that same one-page typed letter and was going to just throw it out finally, figured I didn't need to hang on to it anymore. I knew that prayer was at the top but I remembered that it was very mushy, very personal, VERY emotional and almost embarrassing and didn't want to read it, I just wanted to get rid of everything from my past... I wanted it ALL GONE.
So by this point I had that one page letter RIGHT ON TOP of the SHREDDER and I was LOWERING it INTO THE SHREDDER when the Holy Spirit said, STOP!!!!! -- WOW! It was Unmistakable. STOP!!!!!! -- So I KNEW I was supposed to STOP the shredder and sat there for a few seconds staring at the paper. I didn't want to read that letter again, or the embarrassing prayer. But I did anyway, OBVIOUSLY! ... and I was freaked! Actually I began sobbing. THAT PRAYER at the top of that letter was *****THE PRAYER***** I said back on Dec. 2, 1976 asking for salvation. I had even preserved/typed the DATE on it which is WHY I KNOW, DECEMBER 2, 1976!!! The prayer included the portions of the Sinners Prayer from that first Christian tract I had ever seen, so loooonnnng ago, along with my own pleas added to it (the embarrassing parts. I was in SO MUCH emotional pain back in those days, the child abuse, etc. etc.).
The best part was that this prayer that I had originally written on pink paper on 12/2/1976 included the correct basis for Christian belief and salvation, ie, that I am a sinner in need of salvation, that Jesus died for my sins, was buried, and rose again the third day!!! and that I believed it all! and wanted Him to be my Lord and Savior, etc. And now here, all these years later, was the Holy Spirit at the PERFECT TIME saying STOP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (DON'T SHRED IT!!!!) because He KNEW it would be a PRECIOUS THING for me if I would just REALIZE what it truly was... It was MY SALVATION "CERTIFICATE," so to speak, mushy embarrassing parts and all... AND... He was CONFIRMING **TO ME** -- JUST **FOR ME** PERSONALLY -- that...
YES! I WAS SAVED back on DECEMBER 2nd, 1976, right in my apt. living room floor with that Christian tract and Sinners Prayer, and that...
YES! I had been saved even though I didn't "FEEL" saved at that time, and...
YES! I had been saved even though I FELT I had been "Rejected" because no "liquid love," no "instant new person" change, etc. and...
YES! I had been saved even w/my doubt when I thought it "hadn't worked" and that, "There must be MORE to it than this???" and...
YES! I had been saved even though I later ended up with the JWs for 11 years, and...
YES! I had been saved even through the subsequent 14 years after I left WT I spent in BONDAGE to Mr. Wrong! and...
YES! The Lord Himself had ALL ALONG *****HONORED****** my prayer for Salvation that VERY night of 12/2/1976 even though I DIDN'T HAVE A CLUE myself what was going on, and I didn't even honor it myself!! (see all of the above)...
But *****HE***** HONORED IT and had "KEPT ME SAFE" ALL those many long Up-and-Down, In-and-Out years ****BY HIS GRACE!!!****
That's ETERNAL SECURITY, BABY!!!
And in that second of reading the prayer again and seeing what it said, for the FIRST time since Dec. 2, 1976, I KNEW but I KNEW but I KNEW I WAS and HAD BEEN "ETERNALLY" SAVED BY GRACE All those Years!!!!
Praise the Lord - Literally! Glory be to God in the Highest!
(I just can't get over how the Holy Spirit STOPPED me in THE INSTANT before that paper & salvation prayer went into the shredder! WOW! Talk about Abraham with the knife, lowering it down toward Isaac before God stepped in and said STOP!!!!! The Lord seems to LOVE that Last Minute stuff!!!)
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If anyone ever wonders HOW does God answer prayer? THAT's HOW!
It's ALL IN THE TIMING, baby! That's HOLY SPIRIT TIMING -- Unmistakable!
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Another reason it was important to me and all the grieving over it was because I had/have a "born again since she was 10" Christian lady friend who had told me several years ago, "You couldn't have ever been saved or you never would have gone off with Mr. So-and-So..." That upset me for a LONG time. Hurt actually, and naturally made me doubt EVERYTHING!
But GOD IS GOOD, GRACIOUS and KIND, and HE does NOT obviously SHARE the same opinion of THAT lady friend! Ha! Fantastic! ;-D
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So those are some of all the wonderful things God has done for me in the past few years. What is SO GREAT is how PERSONALLY He does things FOR YOU INDIVIDUALLY. I just LOVE THAT! The Holy Spirit opens ALL of my bottle/jar caps, too, that I can never get open! ;-)
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Now I could add some SPIRITUAL WARFARE stories, too, but that would be another LONG story... Just know when you start actively EXPOSING the DEVIL's DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, WATCH OUT! Oh boy Oh boy you better watch out 'cuz he will start throwing road blocks and boulders at you left and right! It actually started in Fall 2004 -- same time I grabbed hold of the rapture, and after the three hurricanes of 2004, and Mr. Wrong showed up a YEAR LATER and threw a rock at my window! etc. -- and Masons began coming out of the woodwork! It seemed everywhere I turned there was another Mason! It freaked me out at first until I realized, "HEY STUPID! These are EVANGELIZING and WAKE 'EM UP OPPS!" So I turned it around on the Devil, naa naaa! which makes him even madder!
Then more hindrances started afresh in 2005 after I put forth a major effort toward the Lord's work that summer and the Devil came a roaring again... that went on an entire year through Fall of 2006 so I finally called a prayer line when I was totally fritzed at the end of my wits... then a little breather for awhile, and then more "fun and games" 2007, 2008 and continuing... It pays to have prayer warriors on your team, that's for sure!
It got so bad recently I was totally ready to GIVE UP for good, just QUIT TRYING, and not do a single thing further (Jeremiah, you know. Jonah, too!). But within ONE DAY of the "last straw" the Lord did another miracle (to me, awesomely answering prayer in His OWN SPECIAL PERSONALIZED WAY that NOBODY could know but YOU AND HIM), well guess what? I'm UP and At 'em again and KNOW beyond KNOWING I am on the right path, even with the Devil yapping at my heels, which tells me, I must be CLOSE to something REALLY GOOD! He does NOT want me waking people up ( distant family and friends I'm concentrating on these days). He tried to throw me into permanent "give up/despair" mode, but the LORD CAME TO THE RESCUE within 24 hours with the answer and confirmation, "I HEAR YOU! HELP IS ON THE WAY!"
I suppose I should write a book someday instead of in threads that will disappear in a few hours if not less, lol.
Bless your heart Undf! It's great to make contact w/fellow saints years later! Got any war stories of your own? I KNOW you had some several years ago... ouch ouch!
Maybe I'll zap a PM.
Peace and GRACE to you, brother, in our Lord Jesus Christ!
/ag
And PS: Per the Question of this thread, I am not only "born again," but "ADOPTED" AS A "SON" (Daughter!) -- which I love even better than "born again"! From what I now understand and believe, ADOPTED is actually the position for the church age believers!
didn't mean for the whole last half to be in bold. ;-/
