Hello all,
I'm so happy to be accepted as a member of this forum. I hope to learn more from you and with you. I was lead to bible-truths.com about a year ago, and as a result of this, pieces started to come together in the "puzzle" I had kept inside my head for about 10 years. I guess this is the usual story of those who are beginning to see the Truth, but nevertheless I'll repeat it:
Being raised in a protestant church I started questioning my faith, I started to feel ashamed of believing in what I thought of as being an evil god, sending people to hell for all eternity. I was supposed to tell people that they had to choose to believe in Jesus, or burn in hell for all eternity (turn or burn). However my church taught the sanitized hell, that unbelievers simply died and remained dead, but even this seemed so unfair and unjust, seeing that we all are sinners. I started having terrible nightmares about Judgement day, always feeling that my sinful nature condemned me, always feeling inadequate and even evil.
At this time I even began to think of myself as THE beast (the one and only), later I have learned that this is true, however not in the way I understood it back then (I'm not the only one). In the end I could take it no more, and I just gave up on everything, I made a decision to not believe in God at all. Even so, I had a feeling deep inside of me that God really exists, but I chose to deal with that later, because I just couldn't relate to the teachings of the church. Later I met a person who played a part in changing my understanding of God, emphasizing God's love rather than the judgemental God I had known. However the thoughts from years back began to haunt me again, so I just concluded that I would just cut away everything the Bible told about judgement and hell, and just believe in "the good stuff". Of course, I had no scriptural basis for doing this, but it just felt right. About two years later God showed me bible-truths.com through an ad on Google. The ad said something about hell, and I just clicked on it, waiting to see yet another fundamentalist description of the tortures that would await unbelievers. Boy was I in for a surprise!! I started by reading the letter to Hagee, and I just kept on reading, for weeks! I didn't stop until I had read all the articles, all the emails, and cross-checking the Bible and other sites.
It is my hope that joining this forum will open up my eyes and ears more and more, and help me know Him and Jesus Christ.
Eirik