How I Came To Christ (Our Conversion Stories)

Sassy, all glory goes to God!!

You are such a wonderful person, and such an outstanding friend. I seriously don't know what I'd do without you.

And THANK YOU for this wonderful testimony. It was exactly what I needed tonight.

I got a little "refining" today that I wasn't expecting, but I'm really not ready to talk about it yet.

Just as I was about to slip into my inevitable "WHY would God let this happen......" I decided to get on here and check if anyone else had shared their story.

I'm so glad I checked.

And as I sit here with tears in my eyes, and some pretty scary stuff going on, I cannot help but feel JOY.

Pure, pure JOY.

I'm joyful and so, so thankful that all of us found our way to our Savior, even though some of us (like Sassy and I) had to get the THWACK of a lifetime in order to see Him as our Lord.

This earth....blows.

I'm ready for the new earth.

And Sassy "Can I get an amen?!"

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Everyone wants a Savior, but not everyone seems to want a LORD.

If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

that's CLEAR!!

AMEN, SISTA!!!!

I love you so much.

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Luke 6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord and not do the things which I say?

...

Thanks for that most interesting testimony!

AT

NightEternal, you described an Adventist church of your youth that I do not recognize. You have opened my eyes as to why some come in here with different "views" of the same church.

I wish everyone could attend mine, I truly do. I keep hearing about "legalism" but I have not seen it in practice.

Your post gave me pause to think. I've been thinking about our senior members, and I see some of what you describe in them. They were obviously reared in the same type of church you speak of. I see hints of it in the traditions they like to follow. If I were in my 20's, I might find myself bored to tears, but because I'm not, I'm in my 50's I LOVE tradition.

I have heard of churches preaching more EGW than the word of God, but I've not had that happen in my church. She's rarely, if EVER mentioned from the pulpit. She isn't mentioned that much in Sabbath School Class either.

Our Worship Team committee is working hard to bring our worship services into the 20th century, and more pleasing and pallatable to the younger generation. I see nothing wrong with the sermons we have, and our way of worhipping our Lord, but we do have some younger folks in our church, and I know that they would like to hear and sing some more contemporary hymns, for example, so we're working on that. We are also working on helping everyone realize that it's ok to show Jesus how much you love him. No, I'm not talking about dancing all around, or jumping up and down, but a hearty AMEN once in awhile with a beautific smile would please Him greatly. Over the past 8 months I've seen and heard some positive things happening in that area.

Anyway, I thank you for describing the church of your youth in words that brought it to life to me.

I'm very happy you have found a church you are happy with.

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Luke 6:46 And why call ye me, Lord, Lord and not do the things which I say?

Thanks for sharing your story Night!

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Everyone wants a Savior, but not everyone seems to want a LORD.

If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

It was a dark night. Probably the darkest night of my life. My friends and I were partying in the back of a convertible. We rounded the corner of La Grange and Sepulveda in my neighborhood in WLA, under the dim light of a neon question mark. We turned onto Sepulveda Boulevard. Our conversation was peppered with crude jokes and obscenities, and the smell of strange, herbal smoke clung to our clothing. Up ahead, I could see the lights at the intersection of Sepulveda and Santa Monica Blvd

That’s when I saw it- a sign. It was a billboard, an outdoor advertising sign. But not an advertisement- A public service announcement- a very strange public service announcement. It was a warning- a warning like none other I had ever seen. This warning was bigger than life. Profound, eternal, with bigger than life and death significance. Reading this sign, I was overcome by fear. I pointed the sign out to my friends, and they read it, but they ridiculed and dismissed it. It meant absolutely nothing to them.

As I stared at the sign and the dread of it’s message bored deep into me, Suddenly I wasn’t seeing the sign anymore, but the ceiling in my bedroom. Gone were the convertible and my friends. I was lying on my back in my own bed, covered with sweat. It had only been a dream. But before the memory of it could fade away, I jumped out of bed and ran to my desk, and fumbled with the light. I looked for pencil and paper to write down the words of that billboard. But the words were gone! As the dream faded,I could see the sign in my mind’s eye. It showed bright yellow against the black background of the sky. And it had big, black, block letters. But try as I might, I could not remember the words of that sign to save my soul. Frustrating! From that night on, every time I passed the intersection of Sepulveda and Santa Monica Blvd, I wondered, “What did that sign say? What great meaning did it have for my life?”

In my dream the sign was on the right. But at the actual intersection of Sepulveda and and Santa Monica Blvd, the only sign was on the left. It only advertised cars and beer- never anything meaningful or important.

I needed a sign in my life. I had strayed far from what I should be. I was originally raised as a Christian. My father was Southern Baptist. He took my older sister and I to a Baptist church until I was 5 years old. Then he and my mother separated, and we quit going to church

My saintly grandmother, My mother’s mother, lived with us, We called her Nana. Nana found a Presbyterian church that she liked, and she took my sister and I to it. But the kids in my Sunday School class were worldly and irreverent. As we got older, some of them were sexually active.
I wanted to be “cool” like them.

I had all the out of control drives and desires teenage boys had. But I had been taught that God would send me to a burning torment in Hell forever, if I indulged in lust. So here I was tormented by frustration, and tortured with guilt and fear of God, Who I felt made me this way, with all these uncontrollable drives. I was miserable either way! I thought about the eternal torture chamber of Hell, and I hated God for putting me in this no-win, no-way-out situation. I had to stop believing in God just to maintain my sanity.

About that time, my Grandmother died, and we quit going to church.

I want to say- my grandmother’s influence did not stop there when she died. She had prayed for us. Nana had always prayed for me, that I would come to know and love Jesus.

My older sister got deep into art, mythology, psychology and philosophy. I was influenced by her and became more philosophical and atheistic. Atheism brought a kind of relief, but no real satisfaction or peace of mind, because I had always wanted to believe in Jesus, but no one could make sense of the Bible for me. There was a feeling of alienation from God, and sometimes a heartbreaking feeling of separation and longing mixed with hopelessness- because it was all just a fairy tale. God did not exist, and if He did exist, and was the kind of person most preachers said He was, I wasn’t interested.

I got into music, playing guitar and bass, and while I was in High School, my group was the favorite of what the school authorities called the Snake Pit- the druggies and freaks that got together behind the music bungalow at my school. It was about then that I had that dream about the sign.

I really needed a sign. I was never sure about what I wanted to do with my life. Graduating from High School, I wasn’t ready for the University, So I went to a community college in Santa Monica. I thought I wanted to get into some health profession, so I did my prerequisites- the difficult science and math classes at the community college. I worked hard and got good grades, but I got high whenever I had free time from studying.

One day when I was passing in the hall between classes, another student whom I didn’t know came out of the crowd and started witnessing to me about Jesus. I wanted to get rid of him, so I said “Praise God, brother!”, and tried to act like I was already a Christian to get rid of him. But he wasn’t fooled, and I was shook up by the experience. For years, I had wavered back and forth between total atheism and nominal Christianity. This encounter in the hall made me start thinking about Jesus again.

I want to say- you might think your witness is wasted. Especially when a person rejects you.
But you never know what effect your words have on that person, through the Spirit, after you’re gone.

I got straight A’s in my chemistry classes at SMC, because I did well on written tests, but in the laboratory, I was a mess. I spent all my time fumbling with glassware, cleaning and setting up, trying to measure every chemical precisely, and still my experimental results were what scientists call, “unreproducible.” In Organic, one of my experiments exploded.It showered the girl working next to me with acid and brown liquid that ruined her clinic jacket and made a horrible mess of her hair. I had to go into the Chemistry lab on the weekend to make up experiments that had failed during the week.

On one of these trips to school on the weekend, I stopped at a traffic light at the corner of 20th and Delaware, about a block from school, and I saw a little white church with black worshippers coming out of it. They stood on the front steps facing the street, and hugged and shook hands. They looked so friendly.

I thought, “What do I know about black churches?”

I pictured every black preacher as Martin Luther King, who could move me to tears. I loved the sound of a black choir- their singing was so full of spirit and emotion. And black congregations did not sit quietly through a sermon like they were attending a dry lecture- they shouted “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” and “Preach it, brother!” and I thought “What if I visited that church? I might have a conversion experience. I might find Jesus.

“Well,” said a voice in my head, “I’d be the only white person there- I might feel uncomfortable.” And more importantly, there were things in my life that I would have to give up that I was not ready to give up- things that did not fit with being a Christian. I wasn’t ready to go to that church. So I made a deal with myself to ease my conscience. I thought, “If someone from that church came to me and invited me, like that student who witnessed to me in the hall, then I would go to that church.” I knew that probably no one from that church would ever invite me to go there. The light changed, and I continued on my way.

In time, I had a good enough grade point average and enough units. to transfer to UCLA, but I found the university much more difficult than the community college. I wasn’t doing as well, it was costing me a lot of money, and I no longer felt that the career path I was on was suitable for me. I didn’t know what to do, so I decided to take some time out of school while I figured it out.

While I was in school, I also played with a lot of different rock groups around L.A. I was fishing for something special, thinking that if I had the opportunity to join a really successful group, then I could quit school and do music professionally. My adventures in music led me to meet some very unusual characters. Only one seemed to have any promise.

There was an aspiring singer-songwriter named John Smith (a pseudonym, because his career is starting to take off), John had loads of charisma, and he had songs, which none of the others had. John’s first songs weren’t great, but they showed style and a spark of promise. John had a very impressive, well produced demo recording of his songs, with a full band. He lived with his beautiful girlfriend, who worked and supported him.

While I was still in school, I recorded demos of two more songs with John and some other professional musicians. Just when I thought something big could happen, out of the blue, John broke up the band and moved, leaving no forwarding address.

Some months later, just by chance, I ran into John at a convenience store, and we resumed our friendship. John told me that he had to completely re-think his approach to both writing music and the music business. He showed me some new songs, which were much better than the ones we did earlier. I started wanting to be in the group that John would some day put together.

When I stopped going to school, I spent more time with John and his girlfriend Mary, working on songs, getting high and hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Spiritually, I had settled into being a contented atheist. I read books by utopian writers who taught that mankind would eventually solve all our problems through technical cooperation and practical Humanism.

One day, John called me up and invited me to come with him to see Wendy, a spirit medium. He said Wendy could put us in touch with our deceased relatives and predict our future. I didn’t believe in anything supernatural, so I declined John’s invitation. But a couple of weeks later, John invited me again. This time I had nothing to do, so I decided to go, just on a lark. We drove over to Wendy’s place, an old house in the middle of town. I brought a tape recorder- not that I expected anything to happen, but just in case it did.

When we got out of the car, I was surprised to hear coming from the building, the sound of people singing Christian hymns. There was a plaque by the door that read, “Church of the Universal Master, Reverend Wendy Salinger. I did not expect to go to a church for a séance. This was something new to me. I still thought that the people inside were hopelessly deluded, and that they probably believed in UFO’s and Elvis sightings. My unbelief in anything supernatural remained firm as a rock- that is, until we walked into the front door…

When we crossed the threshold and stood in the foyer, I suddenly felt I was surrounded by a powerful force. It felt like I was standing in the heart of a giant transformer in a power plant. The air seemed to crackle with electricity. But what was most bizarre about this sensation was that- I can’t explain this, but…I could tell that this energy was not inanimate- It was a person- a very powerful, invisible person. I experienced what we call a “paradigm shift,” that is, when everything you previously believed, now you realize is wrong. Atheism went completely out the window. I had unquestionably encountered the supernatural.

By the way, I could tell that this spirit was very powerful, but I could not tell if they were good or evil.

I tried to hide what was going on inside me, - keep a straight face while the greeters shook our hands and welcomed us. They gave us slips of paper to write a message to a dearly departed loved one, (you know, someone we were close to- not to Albert Einstein). We were to ask a question of someone in the spirit world- someone we knew, and who knew us.

All my thoughts and fears of God and the hell that awaited me because of my life of sin- thoughts I had buried in Atheism, now came rushing back. What would happen to me when I died? I had to know! I remembered Nana, my saintly grandmother. Surely she would know and would answer. I wanted to know if I had left God out of my life, and if I was going to hell.

So I wrote this message:

Nana,
Have I forgotten something that is important to me?
And I signed, Tel

Notice the way I was thinking. I couldn’t say, “Should I stop (a specific sin),” because if she said yes, I’d be committed! I wrote it in a general way so as to leave some room to bargain with myself.

According to the instructions of the greeter, I folded the paper in quarters to conceal the message inside, and I wrote my initials on the outside- “T”

John and I went into the main room where the meeting was about to start. There was a picture of Jesus in the front, and a man was playing the organ, leading Christian hymns. John and I sat down, and two baskets were passed around, one for the billets- the spirit messages, and the other for offerings. I gave a dollar. The powerful sensation of the spirit had faded somewhat, but was still present.

Before long, Wendy came out. I had been expecting a vampy gypsy lady with a black cat and crystal ball. Instead, Wendy was an nice, average looking lady in her 60’s, sort of like a kindly aunt who would serve you turkey on Thanksgiving Day. Wendy picked out two up-tempo hymns to warm up the crowd for her reading. She said a few words, welcoming everyone and hoping that the spirits would come through clearly that day and answer everyone’s questions.

Then Wendy went behind the podium and commenced her spirit reading. She would take a billet in her hand, and read the initials or number on the outside, (supposedly for anonymity- some of the billets were blank) then Wendy looked out across the room, not in an affected, trance-like expression, but as if she were listening very carefully. She would introduce each communication, saying, “When I come into the vibration of this message, I’m touching someone in the spirit world by the name of..” And she would name names of people, and quote words she heard spoken, and describe visions that were being revealed to her by the spirits. As Wendy gave the spirit message for each person in turn, though they could stay anonymous, if they wanted to, they all responded with gladness at what Wendy had revealed to them. All the people were happy and encouraged with what the spirits had to say through Wendy. Evidently this was a good day.

When Wendy came to John’s message, she said that he would be very successful in music. “And you’ve got to shake and everything, just like Elvis,” she said, and we all laughed. John had not written anything on his billet- he had only drawn an ornate picture of a cross. He had told me that he thought his music efforts were his cross to bear.

Forty five minutes into the reading, Wendy came to my billet.

“T- When I touch this message, I am touching someone in the spirit world by the name of Louise. And I’m touching another person in the spirit world by the name of Tom. When I touch this Tom, I sense that this person has been dead for many years.

“And there’s someone else in the spirit world- Okay, darlin’, Okay.

“Anyway to this Louise, and to the person who wrote this message. I get the impression that this person feels they have forgotten something, that they have left something out. The Spirit tells me, No, you haven’t forgotten anything, you haven’t left anything out

“…and I don’t know why I hear this, but I hear a voice saying, “Telaquapacky, you haven’t forgotten a single thing.”

By this time, my jaw was on the floor. Not only had Wendy got Nana’s name right- her name was Louise, She had also read and interpreted the message accurately without looking at it. But the clincher was the voice. When she said, “Telaquapacky, you haven’t forgotten a single thing,” it was not Nana’s voice- but the choice of words, the inflection, the cadence was just like Nana would have said it, as if Nana were there, and Wendy were imitating her.

Wendy paused. “Whose message is this?” she asked.

I answered, “Mine.”

“Do you know you’re very psychic?” She asked.

“Am I?”

“What sign are you- of the Zodiac?”

“Cancer,” I said.

“A moon child!” Well, so am I. We’re crazy, aren’t we? Oh, yes, you’re very psychic, you see, the reason You feel the way you do is because they’re getting through to you. Oh, yes, you’re very psychic- In fact, some day, you’ll write a book- in the metaphysical field, Some day, some way, you’ll write a book, and you’ll remember Wendy told you.”

My cassette recorder, under the chair got all of it. When I went home, I played the tape for my mother. She was thoroughly convinced that Nana had communicated with Wendy. But my mother did not know all the facts. She did not know all about my secret life.

I could not believe saintly Nana, who was never too shy to give a stern warning or a moral reproof when it was called for, who wanted nothing more for my sister and I that we would come to love and obey the Lord, and who prayed for us... I couldn’t believe that she would, knowing my life, say “Telaquapacky, you haven’t forgotten a single thing.” I knew I had forgotten God and left God out of my life.

I asked my mother who this Tom was who had died many years ago. My mom told me that Tom was one of Nana’s seven brothers and sisters. The one whom Nana was closest to when they were kids on their father’s farm in Kentucky. Tom had died 50 years to the day before Nana did.

Wendy had alluded to something in my family history that I knew nothing about. Unquestionably something supernatural had happened that I couldn’t explain. But in spite of the spirit encounter I had in the foyer, In spite of the mysteries revealed by Wendy, I knew that the spirit that had spoken to Wendy was not Nana, much as I wanted to believe otherwise, because I knew in my heart that what the spirit said was not true. I never went back to the Church of the Universal Master. And I never heard Wendy again.

I did not know what to make of it, nor did I have any immediate plans to change anything about the life I was enjoying, I decided to wait- and that someday I would understand