This started out as part of a conversation with a friend in Scotland.
We have ongoing conversations on various topics, and I felt the need to share this with him. I thought it may or may not interest some of you as well.
There may be some comments won’t make a lot of sense, but those were directed specifically to my friend in our ongoing discussions
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John Rich has a country song —Everybody needs something to believe in. I think we just need to make sure it’s the right thing.
My belief (or lack thereof) was for many years crippled by searching for something in which I was supposed to believe. But no one could or would tell me what that something was.
The United Methodist Church, where I had grown up, didn’t seem to have anything I could identify as a belief. Looking back, I will honestly say that could have been mostly on me, the kid I was then.
Unlike yourself, I had/have no knowledge of many of the religions of our world.
For that reason, when I picked up that London Sunday newspaper whose Sunday center section was dealing on a weekly basis, with the major religions of our world, I thought I had stumbled onto a gold mine. And maybe some answers.
In the extra section for the week on the Jewish religion, the author made the statement, “The surest proof there is a God is that the Jewish people still exist.” History tells that someone from day one has been trying to get rid of the Jews.
It was like God had spoken to me. I had no idea God would speak to me through a newspaper!
But let me go back toward the beginning of this journey.
When I was growing up, my Mom said we were going to church, so we did. All of us. One of the earliest goals I remember having as a kid was to be old enough not to have to go to church. It wasn’t a goal I could safely share with anyone, especially my Mom. Practically everyone we knew went to church, Moms, Dads, all the kids, everyone. I was just never sure why.
Not everyone went to ours. I had friends who attended the Baptist Church, a couple the Catholic, and then there was the Lutheran Church where most of my cousins went. There was also a Seventh Day Adventist Church, Christian Church, the Church of Christ, and a Nazarene Church and maybe another one or two in our small town.
I continued to have questions. But I never asked anyone. An unasked question in my little mind was, why were there so many churches? If we were Christians, why did we not all go to the Christian Church or the Church of Christ where at least the name sounded right.
Navy Boot Camp was surely a place where I would not have to go to church. I was surprised to find that going to what was called “divine worship” provided me at least a few minutes’ relief from the military duties with which we found ourselves consumed. I wasn’t sure why it was called “divine worship.”” It seemed to be a fancy name for church.
Deciding to attend “divine worship” I discovered I had options. As I recall, there were three, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. That seemed strange to me at the time. Not even sure there was a god I had assumed if there was, there was probably just one. But I have a better understanding of why there were three now. Lord knows how many options the Navy in our woke culture might have today, but I digress.
I chose to attend the Protestant “divine worship.” It seemed the safer of the three.
Fast forward a bit, and the Navy sent me to Iceland, then Scotland. In Iceland it was easy not to go to church. There was no chaplain, and no building called a church at the remote site where I found myself. But they flew a Commander (Chaplain) up for Christmas services. They “encouraged” us to attend. So, I did.
The Navy then sent me to Scotland. There I met the young lady who said “yes,” she would become my wife, and thankfully, 53 years later, still is.
Joyce and I were readers. We read Edgar Cayce and his theories of reincarnation and a few other interesting things.
Still searching. More questions.
I talked to the Navy Chaplain at the base. He had no answers, at least none he wanted to share with me. We kept searching. The searchers are now plural. We were searching together. There is indeed strength in numbers.
Previous to this, and while in Scotland, I discovered some interesting stones. Scotland has lots of stones. In St. Andrews, there are stones in a sidewalk that spell out the letters PH. I thought that was interesting. Then I learned the story of young Patrick Hamilton and his death by burning at the stake on that very spot in 1528. His last words to a young man who worked for him were, “All I can leave you now is the example of my death.”
Also, in St. Andrews, I saw the place in the stones of the pavement near the old, ruined castle where George Wishart on March 1 of 1546 suffered the same fate. He was 33 years old.
Why was it I asked myself? Why would these young men give up their lives to share a thing called the Gospel.
And then there are countless monuments and ancient cemetery gravestone with Biblical scriptures engraved on them. There were stately old homes and castles where scripture was prominently displayed both inside and out.
We had for quite some time been looking for someone who would tell us about the Bible and answer our growing number of questions. Now, it seemed even the stones were speaking to us, but this gave us more questions.
It was during this time that we lived in Inverbervie, that a lady, just out of the blue, walked up the path to our front door. She said she wanted to tell us about the Bible.
We invited her in, and not long after, we associated ourselves with the lady’s group. She was a Jehovah’s Witness. We studied with them for about a year. We were regular in our attendance at the Kingdom Hall in Montrose and had studies in our home.
We even traveled with our friends to a conference in Inverness. It was about the “world system of things,” their term, and how it was all going to send soon. They seemed to have answers to many of our questions.
We were all-in, except I was in the Navy. Jehovah’s ‘s Witnesses aren’t allowed to serve in the armed forces. We knew a nice gentleman who, for his beliefs, had spent most of WW2 in a British prison. He was the father of the lady who had come to our door.
My enlistment was going to end before too long, and it would take longer for me to file all the conscientious objector paperwork than just wait for my enlistment to end. So, we waited.
Interestingly, it was through the Jehovah’s Witnesses I came to realize the Bible was real.
For several reasons after we moved back to Oklahoma and met the local Witnesses, the whole Jehovah’s Witness thing didn’t really seem right.
I attended a meeting at a local church in our small town where a gentleman who had been a Jehovah’s Witness spoke. I found his words thought-provoking.
We ended our contact with the Witnesses, all the while remembering with affection those friends we had made in Scotland.
One of the many things we found questionable with the Witnesses’ doctrine was that they said God was finished with Israel. We learned that Jeremiah 31. 35-37 says otherwise.
“Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord.” Jeremiah 31. 35-37
I’m not a Bible Scholar, and yet that seems fairly clear to me.
Joyce and I even did a Martin Luther thing one day when we were driving through Montrose. We found the Kingdom Hall right there where it had always been. We wanted to share our testimonies, but there was no one there. We took some paper we found in the car, probably the back of our car rental agreement, and wrote our testimonies as best we could and put them through the letterbox. Did anyone read it? I doubt it, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. We could have done a complete Martin Luther, except we didn’t have a hammer and nails.
Through an interesting set of circumstances, we were visited by the Pastor of the church where the ex-Jehovah’s Witness had spoken, and he explained the Gospel to us. He told us how sin had come into the world through Adam and how Jesus Christ, God’s Son had come to provide a way to God for us.
He shared with us from Romans:
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;” Romans 3.23
‘For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6.23
“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5.8
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
Romans 10.9,10
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Romans 10.13
He left us with a final verse that has become special to me.
“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” 1John 5.13
I told him I didn’t think that could surely be right. It couldn’t be that simple! You surely had to go to church, put your money in, be nice to old people, probably not smoke or drink or use swear words, not run around on your wife, etc.
But he said it was in simply believing Jesus died for you. Simple as that.
Joyce and I, right there in our living room, told God in prayer that we were sinners and couldn’t save ourselves and trusted Christ for our salvation.
Much later, I understood that being a Christian had nothing to do with a denomination. I began to understand many things better.
That and some of your comments helped me understand early Celtic Christians and their “thin places.” I could see how Iona had been a Christian place before it became a Catholic one and how the two aren’t necessarily the same.
Much of this verbiage is part of my writing project I have entitled, Some Called It Coincidence.
Was it a coincidence that I followed my Dad to Scotland, that there I found Joyce, that I read the Sunday London newspaper story about the Jews, that the stones spoke to us, that the lady came up our path in Inverbervie, and we eventually found our way to faith?
I think not.