A Fourth Angel

And I heard another voice from Heaven, saying, “Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto Heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.”
(Rev 18:4&5)

ow that you have some background information after reading the “Three Angels” link, you are hopefully more equipped to learn about who and what I am, and the primary purpose of this site. As you may have gathered by now, I am a Christian. That, in and of itself, is the most important fact, and this site is, at its core, a celebration of the changes that Christ Yahshua has made in my life.

I am truly a “brand plucked from the fire,” for in my previous state I was a partaker of substances worse than drugs, and a practitioner of arcane arts for which contemporary forms of magic and mysticism are only the precursors. That Yah can save, both spiritually and physically, is a fact that I can personally attest to, for the very chemicals of my body seem to reflect it. Not that it did not always exist as a testimony to the Creative power of Father and Son, but now, it is not only created, but also won back by the redemptive science of salvation.

Up until some time in the early 90s, I was a non-devout Catholic, and then a friend of mine converted to Adventism. This put a bit of a strain on our relationship at first, for he was continuously “preaching” to me about all the things that were wrong with the world and how different God’s plan was for all of us. Naturally, as he had received the truth of the Sabbath, a lot of this had to do with some (as I felt at the time) decidedly anti-Catholic statements, and he and I had quite some heated debates over the issue. Eventually, though, the weight of the evidence presented convinced me. After all, if he could show me from my very own Bible, which even at the time I professed to believe, and if HE, who had never been in church half the amount of times I had, knew so much all of a sudden, then maybe there was something to all that he was saying. Of course being convinced that something is right doesn’t mean someone will necessarily change his/her life for it either.

You see, he could have shown me all the evidence in the world, but evidence wasn’t what I was looking for. If I wanted words and forms I could have stayed in “Holy Mother Church,” but cold, hard facts cannot draw a heart nearer to Heaven. This is what I try to tell other Christians who believe that other people are “stupid” for not believing in God, and who think that a heart can be turned to the right path by argument. This was never Yahshua’s way.

What finally got me to take the right step was when he said these words to me, “David, we have been friends for many years, and you know that I care a lot about you. We both appreciate each other’s insights and intelligence, and we have had some great discussions, even while we were arguing about things like these – religion and faith. But don’t you see... that is exactly why I’m telling you this, because I want you to be with me for all time, so we can keep having discussions like this.”

So I was baptized and became a Seventh Day Adventist. There was, however, one fatal problem. My friend was also quite vocal about the end-time prophecies, and it was not without a certain level of fear that I was brought into the fold. Even the Bible teaches that some will be saved through fear, “And of some have compassion, making a difference: And others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire; hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.” (Jude 1:22&23) However, fear by itself will not keep an individual faithful. There can be no true conversion to service for a God of love through a force that opposes love. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.” (1 John 4:18)

Eventually, I found myself the only member of six friends who had been baptized that day that remained faithful. The others had long since fallen away, leaving only myself and a church full of relative strangers. Oh, I cared for them, of course, for they were my brothers and sisters in Christ. But again, without full conversion, I could not appreciate my responsibility to them, or to my fallen friends. Eventually, I too slipped away. And I fell “like lightning.” I was already somewhat different from other people due to previous occult experience, and with my return to the shadows, I was even more deeply entrenched than I would have been had I never left, taking with me much of the true knowledge I had gained.

The occurrences from that date until around the summer of 2000 are not worth much space here. What is important is that I found myself in a situation I had no excuse for, hurting many people (and many not even aware of it), and myself very close to forfeiting all that remained of my humanity. With a tearful cry, I hurled myself away from my offending practices and depraved way of life. I broke down every mental idol and spiritual barrier between myself and Him who I had once loved (or thought I had loved), and accepted that pleading hand that had reached down to me from Heaven since the day I fell away from grace.

I won’t say it was easy. I won’t say it was enjoyable. It was as if my wings had been ripped off. I was the burned-away corpse of a person, and at random I picked the email address of a pastor I found on the net to plead for a reminder of the infinite grace of Christ. Spiritually speaking, I stumbled into the Messiah’s presence and died there at his feet of a broken heart. But it turns out that this email address was not so random. I found instead someone who knew the power of our Redeemer, and the secret of the resurrection, and was more than willing to share what he knew.

Like Judas repentant, like Lucifer reborn, I rose from the ashes of my former self. As never before I knew the words were true, “the wages of sin is death,” yet who believes in the Son will never die. Yet I was different. Forever before me was the magnitude of my sin. I now had an eternal reminder of just what I was without the grace of Yah, and I was ready now... I was ready to serve Him from love, and not fear. “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” the Book says, and indeed it is. But it is the beginning, not the end.

I knew the emptiness of the human heart, and I was humbled, teachable. Like a certain ex-Pharisee, I had received a flash of light from Heaven, and as surely as Saul lay dead and Paul stood up to take his place, I also received the mercy of my Father with great gratitude and a newfound understanding of who I really was. This step was even further confirmed when I received greater light than I had previously held; and this “greater light” is the reason that you are reading these words printed here.

So you know a little about the SDA church, and now you know a bit about me. Good; we’re mostly caught up. Now, before we can look at the future, we have to spend a little more time in the past, and then some in examining the present.

Continued in the next section...

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