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My Search for Truth
By Jerry Stevens
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| Jerry Stevens |
Everyone, at some point in his life, comes to realize that his deepest needs can be satisfied only through supernatural intervention. Here's how the "God-shaped hole" in my prodigal heart came to be filled.
Unhappy with a life that lacked direction and purpose, I dropped out of college and enlisted in the Army in 1962. Far away from parental restraint and godly grandparents, I soon took up with the wrong crowd and began following a rotten lifestyle. On one particularly shameful occasion, I violently threw my GI (government issue) Bible into a dumpster. If God were really there, I reasoned, He would either zap me on the spot or He must not exist.
Three years after the Bible trashing incident, I was back in college, now both intellectually and morally challenged by such anti-Christian books as Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle and Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason. The sad outcome was 10 miserably confused years, and "intellectual honesty" would be my excuse for refusing to attend church with my Christian wife, Penny. But nagging, unanswered questions would not allow me a good night's sleep. I must, at any cost, discover the true truth that would answer life's big questions—age-old issues such as war, suffering, death, and a possible future existence. Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? I sincerely wanted to know the one real truth; a multiplicity of truths was ridiculous!
By 1976 I resolved to find the truth for myself. I would invest $829 in a 54-volume set known as the Great Books of the Western World. Surely the greatest minds this world has revered over the millennia must, between them, provide all the necessary clues. I had only to organize the puzzle pieces and assemble the big picture. I would at last be at peace with myself and the world. Thoughts of God and religion didn't enter my mind, and yet, I would soon learn that God recognized in me a heart willing to know the truth. He knew me so intimately that He spared me the time and expense that I would have invested in poring over great books written by great men, only to arrive at the conclusion that mere mortals, unaided, cannot grasp the great spiritual truths needed to resolve the great questions.
I'll never forget seeing the movie The Exorcist about this time. I was completely unnerved that real demons play a role in earthly affairs. Nothing in my past experience prepared me for this frightening revelation, and I remember lying in bed all that night, shaking uncontrollably in abject fear of dimensions unseen. Now I tremble to think that holy angels of God were even then grappling with the powers of darkness, and my very soul was the prize!
Late one evening in August, I uncharacteristically decided to stay up late to watch Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show. Guest author Hal Lindsey jerked me wide-awake as he discussed reasons why he felt his best-selling religious book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was enjoying such amazing success. Lindsey underscored the inerrancy of Bible prophecy—how this was the only Book whose predictions were 100% accurate because divinely inspired.
The following evening, I began reading The Late Great Planet Earth. The material on prophecy was riveting, and Lindsey concluded several chapters with simple invitations to accept Jesus Christ as personal Saviour. I felt myself being quietly, peacefully drawn into God's very presence.
It was enough. No more than 69 pages into this 180-page book, I became convinced that God alone had the answers I had been seeking all along. I felt urged by Heaven to confess my sins and seek the peace of which Lindsey wrote so convincingly. And I was not disappointed. I knew with absolute surety, then and there, that God heard my sincere prayer, and that I was on my way to being a real Christian. And so on the night of August 26, 1976, I was converted to the religion of Jesus Christ. I hadn't known so peaceful a night's rest in my whole life! That night, alone with God, I had finally reached the turning point. The prodigal had at last come home.
I have often considered the chain of events that prepared me to accept God's outstretched hand that fateful night. He knew, far better than I, that I was making a sincere attempt to know the truth about life's big questions. I have already mentioned my Great Books self-help scheme. Then there was the scary movie—enough to frighten a grown man into the stark realization of just how helpless we humans are against the forces of evil . . . without Divine intervention on our behalf. And finally the timing of Lindsey's life-changing book. Then there had been dear old Grandpa, who had passed away back in 1971, but who had died with his prayer list in hand. It had taken me five years to provide an answer to his dying prayer!
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