| I was saved (born again) by the grace of God in 1977. Before I entered junior high school, I had been raised in a churchgoing family. My Mom and Dad would drop my sister and I off at Sunday school while they went to church. Many Sundays when we were visiting my grandmother, we'd attend church with her. However, both churches were mainline Protestant churches that taught Jesus loves you and that as long as you were 'good' and go to church you'll go to heaven. They rarely taught about hell, and only that it was a very bad place to be sent; but it was only a place where 'bad' people such as murders and robbers were sent to be punished.
By the time I graduated from high school, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I went to college but dropped out after only one semester. I met my wife-to-be on a blind date that Christmas and found a job in a local company working in their mailroom. The Vietnam war was in full swing and most of my friends had either enlisted or were in college. I decided to return to school the following fall. One year later, my wife and I were married. I continued to attend classes, but only haphazardly and flunked out. I had NO thoughts of God and neither of us attended church.
Ten years and three children later, I noticed two men at work reading their Bible. At the time I made wise cracks and argued with one of them about the Bible. Later, I decided to find out just what they saw in the Bible. I dusted off the King James Bible that I received when I was a child in Sunday school and began to read "The REVELATION of Saint John the Divine". (You probably think it was a strange choice, but I'm a Science Fiction fan and "knew" The Revelation was about the end of the world.) I remember reading in bed at night and crying. I didn't know why, I just knew that my name wasn't written in the 'Lamb's Book of Life', what ever that was, and that something had to be done or I'd be 'cast into the Lake of Fire' (Hell) (Rev 20:11-15). A week before God saved me, the Lord saved my wife through two ladies who lived in our neighborhood. I noticed the change in her, but didn't want anything to do with those "Bible thumpers". Later in the week my wife asked me if I wanted someone to explain to me what I was reading (Acts 8:30). I agreed and that Thursday night the Pastor of a local Bible believing church and the Holy Spirit opened the Word of God to me and I was saved!
http://mysite.verizon.net/eph4.14ff
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