Hello and thank you as yet another new poster. I had been a 'lurker' for a couple of years and have not joined the forum previously as I'm just getting to the point now that I might have something worthy to share with the group. I'm a 46 year old single male and I live in Michigan's upper peninsula (brrr). You have to like winter up here, a few years ago we had 320 inches for the season!
I had been a rebellious child and teenager and was 'saved' when I was 21 years old. I was of the pentacostal assembly of God flavor and threw myself into all the teachings. Some good but most were rotten as I have now come to learn. I was in Christian ministry for several years at a Christian boy's home for juvenile delinquents and then a few years later was employed at my church (mega church, Grand Rapids Michigan area) for 5 years as the audio visual coordinator. Everything was great so I thought but the church got wrapped up in the false brownsville revival movement in the early to mid 90's.
I moved from the big city and relocated to an extremely rural area of the U.P. in 1997 to a town of 250 people with two small churches. One catholic and the other the community prysbterian church. I was in a delimma as I knew I couldn't go to a catholic church and I went a few times to the other church and heard more about the Green Bay Packers football team (which is a religion in it's own rights up here, lol) then I did Jesus Christ. So I drifted with no church home and survived off various audio's ect from various Christian teachers.
I came across Ray's tithing paper totally by accident somewhere on the net and as I read it I couldn't believe what I was reading. I was taught that tithing wasn't old testament law persay but a principle that went througout the scriptures into the new testament church as well. We certainly treated our Pastor's as Kings and they lived as Kings as well but I digress. I couldn't argue with the scriptures Ray was using, the exegesis and most importantly the ability God gave Ray to 'tie it all together' into something both understandable and well presented. I shared the paper with a number of people and everyone was astounded by it.
As I didn't get the paper off the website after awhile I did a search on Ray to try to find more. I came to the website and got partially into the lake of fire and sadly concluded that Ray might know what he's talking about with tithing but he was a heretic for teaching against eternal hell. I mean after all didn't Jesus talk about hell? Didn't he talk about the worm that didn't die and outer darkness, gnashing of teeth ect? I couldn't even consider that the orthodox teaching was in error because even to think that hell wasn't real to most Christians is almost heresy in itself!!
However after several months I came back to the website and first read Ray's letters of Hagee and Dr. Kennedy (who I greatly respected at one time even though he wasn't Pentacostal, tsk tsk) and from there I went to the Lake of Fire. Needless to say God was working on my heart and I began to change as the Lord gave me more of an understanding. I downloaded the entire website to the computer as well as all the teaching audio's. Truly the scriptures are true that to him who has more will be given. I can see now how the Lord has been teaching me and showing me the truth's behind his word and even though I'm a babe in the deeper truths I do have a hunger to know the whole truth.
I do have a few questions at some point that I'm sure has been covered before that I'm fuzzy on but I'll keep that for another posting. This is a great little forum with many learned members who have wisdom. For those of you who have been here for quite a long time you might not be aware just how many lurkers come here. They may not say anything or even join but the seeds are being planted and who can ask for more? God bless and keep each and every one of you as we learn His truths.
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Topic: Hello and thank you!! (Read 6223 times)