Converted From Satanism.
I am a Christian converted by God from satanism. After leaving a comment online about a Christian video, I started receiving mail from a satanist. Since then we have corresponded back and forth. He sends a satanic hymn, and I send him scricpture and do my best to witness to him. I pray the Lord opens his eyes. The following includes my testimony and was my first letter.
Dear satanist that left me a comment that I deleted:
Perhaps the Lord sent you here for a reason. I'll be praying for you. You don't know why but I hope one day you'll see before it's too late. I used to be a satanist myself. By the way, you seem like you're a lot nicer than I was then.
When I was four years old my parents were avoiding each other. I have flashbacks from before then, but that's all I can remember in terms of their relationship to each other. When I was five my parents were getting a divorce. All I knew was that my dad had just become a Christian and now my mom was moving out. So I hated him for it. And not only that, but I listened to the lies of the devil and hated the God of my father as well. I set my rebellious heart fiercely against Him. From ages 5-16 (until I moved out of my dad's house), I attended church - twice on Sundays, and on Wednesday evenings. I hated it. I had hateful eyes towards the people there. I purposefully shut my ears to the truth. However, there were a few people there I couldn't help but like. They were few and far between, but they were genuine and real, down-to-earth people that took an interest in me and liked me, even though my hate for the church had to be written all over me. Why they reached out to me I didn't know. But bottom line, I hated the hypocrites and to spite them I rebelled against God, never wanting to spend a second with them in the next life. And where were all the hypocrites going to end up? Heaven? I don't think so. Little did I know I was headed to hell where all the hypocrites were going to be too! I lied to myself constantly, making a discipline of hardening myself to anything Christian; resisting any temptation to be moved by anything I had heard and had been stirred or touched by. Oddly enough, the Christians were the only ones trying to save me. I don't think an atheist, satanist, or buddhist ever cared that much. I was never going to allow myself to become a Christian - it would be the farthest thing from me. I took pride in myself and lived for me, self-exaltation, superiority, self-indulgence, etc. . . . self-styled.
I thought it was ironic that I went through so much depression. Later I acknowledged to myself that I was probably bi-polar. I wouldn't let it show because I didn't want to show any signs of weakness, even though I think I was the most insecure person I knew.
When I was six we lived next to some satanists who killed my neighbors pet rabbit and told the little girl about it. I still thought they were cool. Cops were there almost every weekend. They lived there for a couple of years and then moved. When I was in the fourth grade my older sister started a bible study with my older brother, her boyfriend, and four others; two people from the church, a gangbanger hiding from his gang, and yep, an ex-satanist. I wanted to know all about their past that seemed so glamorous to me. The ex-satanist, now preacher, was a pastor's son who watched his best friend get taken over by demonic possession. About a week later his friend died in a car accident on his way home from a ritual. The gang-banger lost his faith and stopped coming - I never heard what happened to him. I always wondered if his gang ever found him. I continued on my rebellious ways, still unsatisfied with life and running into depression. I was 8 when I almost got arrested (a subdivision board had mercy on me and didn't file charges-the police were involved). The same year I was almost expelled from school for property damage. When I was 12 I finally got arrested. I almost when to juvenile hall for that one. Inwardly and outwardly I was evil. Yet somehow I thought I was wiser and better than anyone! I should be dead or in prison right now. Anyway, I married my high school sweetheart when I was 20. I bought a house at the same time. I was high every day for the next two years, and drunk frequently. On the weekends I would wake up and put whiskey in my coffee. I was wretched yet self-righteous. I justified everything I did and in my head I was always right, and if somehow I couln't justify it I shoved that memory aside. I was happier than my wife because I made sure I won all of the arguments. I felt I was doing more than her because I brought home a bigger check. Most fights started because I thought I did more around the house, even though in all reality she did a lot. I just ignored it. And I didn't even stop and think for a minute that she was tired from working so much and worn out. On top of her stressful job, I had destroyed her self-confidence at home and made her feel worthless. I never hit her; I just made her feel like nothing. My wife loved me anyway. All in all I thought we mostly had a good marriage.
I could only keep the depression down for so long before it would flood me again. Sometimes I would lose all emotion and become apathetic. One night that was the case. I had just been through a low spot and had finally lost almost all feeling. I was pretty numb. I had what I thought was a moment of clarity. It was 2:00 A.M. and my high was wearing off. I took a vaguely honest look at my life. I admitted to myself I was a scumbag . . . too big for the bag anymore. All of my years before seemed wasted. I couldn't figure out the past puzzles that my mind wouldn't let me let go of. Like when I was four or five and was hitting my older brother over the head with a wooden hammer while he just sat there, holding the square block in his hand, just sobbing. (He wouldn't do anything else and neither would I. I couldn't figure out why he just sat there. Still, 20 years later and I still couldn't figure it out - he was four years older than me. Worst of all I thought, if my dad didn't catch me in the act what would have happened to my dear brother? Now I know that the Lord had intervened and stopped me from the evil thing I was carrying out.) Or what about the other many other mind-bending past mysteries? But I was in agreement with myself that I had had enough of myself, as did the rest of the world. I cursed the day I was born. I was going to do what I had thought about since I was a little boy in grade school. I finally had the guts, had seen behind every appealing promising trap, had sucked life dry, no longer felt responsible for anyone’s feeling I might hurt. I felt totally alien to the world. I felt as if I wasn't supposed to have been born, yet somehow was. I was named in honor after a miscarried cousin, somehow I felt I had been cursed or reincarnated. I was never going to write a suicide note, either. I didn't want to leave some sappy, self-pitying note for my family or friends. At the same time I didn't want anyone to have one of those puzzling memories haunting them, too. I tried to justify and explain it every way I could. I wrote a three-page note. I then decided I would not leave a note. So, I decided to stop wasting time and to get on with it. I very methodically took the hose off of the vacuum cleaner. I went quietly outside and taped up the hose to my tailpipe. I tied the back door shut and went inside. I thought I should have warmed up the engine because it was freezing inside. Then I realized it wasn't going to matter anyway. The fumes were surprisingly potent. All I had to do was close my eyes and take a nap. I was shivering too much to fall asleep, although I thought I would. I closed my eyes and felt a sudden tight, jerky, pull of despair within me. As if someone pulled a rip cord on the bottom of my heart and said "Man, didn't think it was gonna be like this. I never thought my life was going to turn out this way." A total sense of worthlessness and failure fell over me. For the first time I actually prayed and said "God . . . I'm sorry for the mess I've made." Next thing I know I'm thinking of how my wife reacted hysterically when she found her dead pet. Then I thought about what I would be doing to my wife. I didn't deserve her and she could have found a guy way better than me who would treat her right. And I couldn't help but see her going hysterical over finding me in the morning. And in my heart I knew she would snap. I don't think she could handle that. And I realized further what a jerk I really was capable of being. Ashamed and still alive, I turned off the engine and reversed my procedure. At 3-something A.M. I went to bed next to my wife.
While believing in a god, I started to live my life with a new positive outlook, yet I still lived in my sins. I thought I had gotten to know the God of the Universe and started to become kind of "spiritual" - I did a lot of searching. I thought I had lightened up on rebelling against God and started embracing Him. Yet I did not know Him. While trying one day to cross-reference something I had read in a book, I bought a Bible and started reading Revelations. I was instantly convicted and for the first time scared. For at that moment I knew I was an enemy of God and totally at His mercy. I knew then that the former sense of spirituality I felt was entirely false. I had no ground to stand on. I was afraid and knew that for whatever reason God had mercy on me and spared me from the plan I was going to carry out the few weeks prior. I knew at that moment that my life and the rest of my eternity were in God's hands. I felt very small at that moment. I cried out to God for mercy. I was face down saying from the depth of my heart that I was sorry for all the lies I had spoken about God. Shaking, I asked God to take over my life, that I couldn't do it anymore. My eyes were opened by God's grace and I knew the truth. The morsels of the gospel I had grown up with came back to me. I felt the love of God wash over me. I never thought God could actually love me with love as I have never known before. I read the Prodigal Son and cried. That God would take someone like me and call me His. Me, the guy who only cried a few times that I was aware of in my life - had poured everything out. I felt like a son loved by a Father he never knew before. One who made Himself known to me, and made my soul know His love for me. Something the devil tries to keep me from all of the time now. The fellowship that I long for. I knew Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. I knew God and forgiveness.
Day one of my new life. I burned about fifty books, which don't burn fast, threw out videos, some drugs, related devices, liquor, about half of my record collection - cds, etc . . . I decided to follow Christ. While I started out strong, I started to slip while new in the faith. Old ways within die hard and some never die at all. But Christ has given me grace and strength through it all. I've had my share of doubts, shaking sand. But Christ has always carried me through it. Thank God He won’t turn me away or let me be snatched out of His hand. He is the Father that does what is best for His children, whether they know it or not. And by His grace, He has brought me to Him. And I know my eyes have been opened, I knew reality as I knew it before was blindness. When my eyes were closed, and I was obliviously marching to a hell I thought would be cool while the devil was drooling right in front of my face and my eyes never saw it. I was on my way to hell, proud of it, never knowing how much the devil wants to murder you and see you fall from God's protection from evil. The spiritual death that happened to mankind was caused when the serpent (Satan, the father of lies, the evil one) tempted Adam and Eve to sin against God and they followed him and rebelled against God. Since then, man is naturally alive to sin and dead to God. This is the way it is. Man follows the devil, most times unknowingly, deceived into thinking that they are actually living for themselves, and/or following their own god. Or born-again man, by God's grace, follows the one True God; being one God in three persons; that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God, who has defeated the evil one by taking the death that we deserve upon Himself, in the body of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God, and came from heaven, sent by His righteous Father, to be obedient to the Father, who laid His life down for the sheep (the lost are astray and are blinded in darkness under the dominion of the devil). By His mercy our eyes are opened, and we have a Savior of our souls and will be saved from our sins.
