Throughout my life I traveled along a path of religious upbringing, religious conversion, religious zeal, religious disappointment to a point where religion was irrelevant.

My road from Pentecostal Christianity began with my belief in the Bible as the inspired written infallible word of God, the all knowing, all seeing, omnipresent, omniscient Triune God, Jesus Christ as the Son of the Living God, the Father as the Creator, the Holy Spirit as the person of the Triune God by which I could directly experience God and all the blessings of God, and my belief in the kingdom of heaven and the damnation of hell. I believed that if you did not accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior you were lost, separated from God and destined to an eternal hell and torment by which there was no escape. However, if you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you were saved from eternal torment and hell and you would be with God in the kingdom of heaven where there was eternal bliss.

I no longer agree with those beliefs and I currently believe that each person must decide for himself/herself how and what they wish to believe. From my standpoint there is only the present torment or ecstasy of life itself based on one’s individual decisions or unforeseen events in his/her life. I do believe that there is a responsiveness within the human heart to inspired feelings of love, devotion as well as an awe of the beyond and things we cannot explain during our lifetime. However, how we emphasize our explanations of the beyond and things we cannot explain may well affect the direction of our lives.

Because of my religious history, it may be asked if I even still believe in God. When that question is asked I wonder if we are on the same page as to the definition of God. Are we talking about God the creator, an individual God, a triune God, a caring and loving God, a judgmental God, a personal God, a God who is or was a person on this earth, an alien God. Or is it a bisexual God or a God represented in the life forms on the earth. A God who is waiting for us on the other side or is it in another dimension. Is it a God who is just having fun with all these little humans running around on the earth because he/it is bored? I mean, what does God have to do anyway? If we are going to spend eternity with God what are we going to do with him? Is there a big playground or millions of books or rooms of discovery of things we missed during this life? Does he have things planned for us when we get there, wherever “there” is located? Is god smaller than an atom or larger than the sun? Is it a God who can change events or does the definition of God include all of the above or none of the above. Anyway, my answer to whether there is a God is that God was created by man and man has an amazing imagination so for each of us God is who we wish/hope/believe him to be. So, yes, there is a god if you believe. But does he exist outside our imaginations…even after all these centuries and all the technology we have available there is no empirical or mystical evidence that proves to me sufficiently that there is or is not a god. But maybe then again, god wants it that way.

How is it that I could believe in Jesus so strongly one day and then change my mind so radically? I could blame my parents for this change. On the one hand, my mother was the third oldest child in her family and the only daughter with seven brothers. Her father died when she was very young, her family was poor and her mother attended the Pentecostal church in Detroit with her children. In those days, the Pentecostals were very strict: no make up, long dresses and women kept their place. My mother rebelled against the harshness but always felt guilty for it. On the flip side, my father was an only child raised for the most part by his uncle near Detroit but later joining his parents for reasons I am not aware. He may have attended church at some point in his upbringing but you would never have known it because he never expressed a belief in God that I can remember. He liked to fish, hunt and trap...believing in God seemed irrelevant. My mother met my father during her rebellious stage at age 21 when my father was 17 and they were married about a year later.

In 1964, at age 17, I graduated from high school and I was enrolled in the University of Minnesota for the fall semester. The summer of 1964 was difficult as my girlfriend at the time, my first love, was catholic but her parents were totally against us being together. Even though she would sneak out to see me, eventually her parents stopped her and we ended up breaking up. I was devastated. During this whole ordeal I had been talking to an Assemblies of god church member about my religious problems with this girl. I attended an Assemblies of God church on occasion but did not believe in the Pentecostal stuff. But, in August 1964 after talking with an Assemblies of God member, distraught with the breakup over this girl and uncertain of my future. The Assemblies of God member helped me open my heart and accept Jesus into my life and I had a religious experience. It was an indescribable and amazing experience of joy and happiness. It felt as though the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders. As I shared this experience with members of the Assemblies of God there was considerable support, as though I had found another family, they reassured me of the reality of my experience and they shared their own religious experiences.

I started attending more Christian Pentecostal meetings and prayer gatherings and in a couple weeks I experienced “glossalalia” or “speaking in an unknown tongue” which is a common practice among Pentecostals. Shortly thereafter, in September 1964, I decided to enroll in an Assemblies of God Bible College in Minneapolis and become a Pentecostal minister. My father was dumbfounded and distressed that I had changed from attending the University of Minnesota to a small religious college. My father, mother and I met with the minister, who reassured my father of the reality of my experience and basically that I had not gone off the deep end. At least, from my minister’s perspective, I was acting normal.

I remember one of the first times I gave a sermon. I was 18 years old and was preaching in downtown Minneapolis at the Salvation Army. There were about 250 people in attendance, mostly men. After I gave my message I asked everyone to bow their head and those who wanted to receive Jesus in their lives to raise their hands. Imagine my surprise when there were about 20 or more people who raised their hands. I then asked them to come forward to pray and receive Jesus.

I attended the religious college in Minneapolis for a couple of years learning Greek, the Bible, Bible doctrine and other religious views and how they differed from Christian thought and teaching. I also gave sermons in churches, to youth groups, at the Salvation Army, nursing homes etc. During the summers I went to Detroit and stayed with my Pentecostal relatives. While I was in Detroit during the summers I joined Teen Challenge, a Pentecostal nationwide group, which worked with drug addicts and other young people living on the streets in the inner city trying to get them saved and off the streets. During one of the summers my grandfather gave me a book titled, “The Normal Christian Life”, by a Chinese Christian named “Watchman Nee” who had developed a following in China of over 70,000 Christians but had been put in jail for 20 years by the Communists in Shanghai in 1952 on trumped up charges. His Christian teachings had been printed in England into books. The author of those original books indicated in his biography of Nee written several years later, that in 1938, as a young missionary about to leave Britain for India, he was privileged to spend some valuable weeks with (Nee)…and he found his whole outlook on Christian thought, life and service profoundly affected and redirected with a renewed purpose. I also, remember one of many Christian experiences that affected my thinking and life from reading Nee’s book. After reading some thought-provoking ideas in Nee’s book …I just had this incredible realization that I had this divine Christ life in me and I should just let Christ live his life out through me…it was a release from thinking that I had to try through my own effort to live the Christian life…it was a real high experience…which stayed with me for a long time. Apparently, Nee had a similar experience when he had the same realization as I found out when I reading one of the biographies of Nee years later: Nee apparently said,

“…Oh it was so real to me! I felt like shouting my discovery through the streets of Shanghai. From that day to this I have never for one moment doubted the finality of that word: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’”

Anyway, his book and experience affected the direction of my Christian experience and life.

I later moved to Santa Cruz, California to attend another Pentecostal college. I also became even more intrigued in the writings of Watchman Nee, and began reading and sharing his writings with others which offered more than the simple teachings presented by the Pentecostals. His early released books from England had become popular spiritual books among a considerable number of Christians.

While attending Bible College in 1969 a friend and I passed out Christian literature and talked with people about Jesus every Saturday night on the Santa Cruz boardwalk along the ocean. While I was passing out Christian literature one Saturday night I met Karl Hammond at the Santa Cruz boardwalk. As it turned out he was associated with the primary coworker of Watchman Nee, and, get this, his name was Witness Lee. Watchman Nee had sent Witness Lee with others from China to Taiwan to spread their Christian work. Watchman Nee, knowing the possible pitfalls ahead with the Communists, decided to stay back in China to support the churches he had developed. In Taiwan, from 1949 until 1964, Witness Lee’s ministry spread throughout Taiwan and neighboring areas and thousands came into those local churches. Lee moved to Los Angeles in 1964 to spread the ministry to America.

Karl had known Witness Lee for a couple of years and subscribed to Nee and Lee’s Christian teachings. Karl had just arrived in Santa Cruz with his wife. He was living in an apartment and praying every morning at 6am. I joined him in his morning prayers and after a few short weeks I left the Pentecostal church and college and I began attending state universities. So, Karl and I began a church in Santa Cruz after the Christian principles espoused by Nee/Lee.

The differences between.

The church we started in Santa Cruz grew to a congregation of over 125 Christians in less than 2 years, which was made up of mainly educated young people who had been hippies or were college students. We baptized them in the ocean and provided training and direction. In the meantime, I had informed my Pentecostal relatives in Detroit about my experiences and they began meetings in Detroit along the same principles and they left the Pentecostal Church as well. In 1971 at the request of Witness Lee I moved to Detroit because so many of my relatives had become interested in the movement including my grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. I attended the university in Detroit where I conducted bible studies with students. While in Detroit we marched in white robes with slogans on them printed in large bright letters saying things such as, “Jesus is Lord”(this apparently started in Taiwan many years ago), passed out thousands of flyers, and one time I climbed on the cafeteria table at Wayne State University during lunch and preached the gospel of Jesus Christ. We had morning prayer and bible readings and we met in the evenings for training or fellowship meetings. A couple of years later I decided to move to Ft. Lauderdale to be involved in developing another church. Most of my relatives moved there as well.

However, not all was well in the movement. In the early 1970s Witness Lee gave several day training in Anaheim on the kingdom of heaven, which I attended. He indicated that despite the fact that we were saved Christians we still might not make the kingdom of heaven and we may well have to go through a kind of purgatory for a time. Lee stated,

“…To participate in the local church requires only salvation through faith; but to participate in the kingdom of the heavens requires further seeking to overcome, submitting to heavenly authority and receiving heavenly control and training after experiencing salvation.”

Where was the heavenly authority and control… in the center from Witness Lee? While this may not have been the point of contention for others it was for me since a considerable part of the movement fell apart over the next few years. For me, although I still was involved and attended other trainings in Anaheim the seeds of doubt had been planted and eventually I decided that this was not what I wanted. Of course, I had no interest in Pentecostalism. I felt that I had been quite active in Christianity and it was time to take a sabbatical of sorts. While I occasionally attended a Christian church and taught adult bible classes at one point I eventually concluded after stepping back and looking over the 15 years that I had been involved with Christianity that while it was great fun, a lot of it did not make sense and it was not the way I wanted to live the rest of my life nor could I in good conscience believe in a Christian god who sends people to hell. I had come full circle and while I probably now reflected more of my father’s thinking the fact that I had become so involved and learned a great deal about Jesus and the Bible I wanted to put it all in perspective in my life. So how do I explain all my mystical experiences and my involvement with God and Jesus…as well as all the others who shared a similar experience… do I just write them off as a bad dream… delusional, unreal, metaphysical, quantum physics, unknown, or who cares…

I felt that within the context of Christianity I had experienced both the intellectual and mystical in a dramatic fashion. I have spoken with others who were in a variety of religions or sects to include Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Transcendental Mediation, Satanism, Morning Star, Hindu, Buddhism, Astrology, Scientology and the like as well as reading about various experiences of individuals. I have had no interest in seeking the “truth” in another religious experience whether it is Eastern or Western religions. I have been to the Mountaintop with a wealth of spiritual experiences. Now, I am more interested in climbing real mountains. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading a significant number of the works of Joseph Campbell who offers unique insights into the parallels of religious myths. From reading Mr. Campbell we may be at the crossroads in regards to religious thought. From my perspective we seem to be stuck in religions that are thousands of years old and generally regurgitate in new language old myths. Maybe that is good because it represents a new search for truth that involves the human heart, science, psychology and information.

One observation I wish to make. It is one thing to read about an experience in a book as I did in the Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and gain some experience from it and share it with others as to how it is interpreted. It is quite another to actually be involved in the experience for real. I not only met with and spoke with Witness Lee but also Samuel Chang, watchman Nee’s brother-in-law and many others from Taiwan and China as well as being actively involved in the ideas, thoughts, experiences and insights. While my relatives were so excited about Watchman Nee’s book that they wanted to share it with me, their experience and reality was beyond any of their expectations and it was overwhelming. Also, it is not just listening to a speaker and becoming excited about what has been said but it is living the experience of what was heard. That is another issue altogether. It is partly because the perspective of the writings may be from a different experience, a different land, a different millennium and a different perspective. When someone tells me they believe in God or Jesus or Buddha I often wonder what they mean. Do they mean they find them interesting, tantalizing, or is it heartfelt where they are living the life---that is the true believer. I think for the most part this congregation is open to religious ideas but not to the extent that we would become a fanatical true believer---and that’s the way I like it… enough of this true believer thing unless it is a matter of life and death…for freedom of speech or democracy…things that have been proven freedoms… I mentioned Bertrand Russell in my title and I read his book, “Why I am not a Christian” back in the mid 60s and at the time I thought that while he was interesting he was too extreme. But, Bertrand Russell represents freedom of thought. Bertrand Russell—fanaticism…

SNAPPING…Genesis 1 Leviticus Gen 1-2 ---Rev.23-24 Song of Songs. Bertrand Russell and Joseph Campbell probably most reflect my outlook at this point.