The God Who is There: Why I became a Christian.
The God Who Is There
I would say that the primary reason that I am a Christian is because when I first called out to God, Jesus answered me. Prior to that I searched for the meaning of life and looked in a great many areas including drugs, sex and the occult. I was only 17 when I was saved but I started getting involved in the occult at the age of 11. At that age I would go to the library and check out demonology and witchcraft books and I started to read and follow what they said. Not long after I started dabbling in the occult I became oppressed. I believe it was a direct result of my occult activities. I started having demonic visions and deep depressions. I also started self-mutilating by cutting myself which I believe was a direct result of dabbling in the occult. One day when I was going under one of these depressions I called out to God to help me and to show me that he existed. He answered me on the spot, the room brightened and the presence of God filled the room, it was gloriously overwhelming. I had met the living God and my life would never be the same. The presence of God stayed with me for a long time.
That was the beginning.
Since I was raised Catholic and knew practically nothing about the Bible I started to learn as much as I could. Prior to becoming a Christian I tried reading the Bible and could not understand it. After I became a Christian I read the Bible over and over again and studied it inside and out and understood it.
The Bible itself says that the“natural man discerneth not the things of God”.
I discovered that there were no contradictions in the Bible but instead found out that for every supposed contradiction there was a reasonable answer. I have a very curious mind and I followed every objection studying Christian Apologetics (the reasons for faith) until my own curiosity was satisfied. Not only did Christianity make perfect sense to me,the prophecies that were given thousands of years ago were also evidence for the truth of the scriptures. At some point it would have taken more faith for me to disbelieve than it did for me to believe the Christian message. The answers provided by the Christian faith satisfied every intellectual curiosity I had ever had about the world; why we were here, who God was and what happens after death. All this time my close personal relationship with God grew.
This is not to say that living the Christian life was easy. It most certainly was not and I failed more times than I would like to admit, but those were my failures and not God's. Jesus has never failed me and ever since that day in February over 34 years ago He has been there for me.
I guess the final reason I am a Christian is because of the prophecies in the Bible. There are over 300 prophecies just about Jesus in the Old Testament as well as prophecies that are being fulfilled before our very eyes. No other book is like that and no other "supposed" God has revealed the beginning from the end. Prophecies like the mark of the beast in the book of Revelation that foretells a time that mankind will no longer be able to buy or sell if they don't have a mark on their right hand or forehead. This prophecy alone could not have been fulfilled until the advent of computers. Now it not only can be done it is at the very verge of happening. Now, many of us hardly even use cash and have instead transferred all of our banking needs to virtual machines. It can only be through divine power that John, writing on the isle of Patmos could pen those words 2000 years ago and we are seeing their fulfillment today. In the book of Daniel, Daniel the prophet wrote that knowledge shall increase and many will go to and fro and in the last 100 years we have seen transportation and knowledge increase exponentially, this was written over 3000 years ago. Another prophecy is that the Jews would be brought back to the land of Israel after being scattered over the face of the earth and that Israel would become a state in one day! This happened on May 28th 1948! It would be one thing if a stray prophecy were fulfilled here and there but these prophecies are all being fulfilled at the same time, this is statistically impossible.
So for me, the reason I am a Christian is threefold; my personal relationship with God, my intellectual curiosity having been fulfilled and because of the surety of prophecy. For me, after 34 years of being a Christian it would still take more effort and faith for me to disbelieve than to believe.
