Some interesting responses and plenty to think about!
As for me, I grew up in a home where my parents became Christians when I was very young. My parents involved me in their own spiritual journey, and I grew up experiencing answered prayers and seeing family members and friends healed. We had a very open environment to enquiry and discussion of spiritual things and when we had questions, possible answers would always be explored. I was never told to “just take it on faith”. Also, I had already heard of the illuminati in the early eighties.
Having a fairly restless mind and a thirst for knowledge made me rather unlike some of my peers and caused me to be a bit of an “outsider” to some of the other teenage stuff that was going on.
Perhaps about the age of 16 I started to develop a find of FOMO (fear of missing out) with the “things of the world”. I certainly didn’t want the Rapture to happen before I had had some fun and I didn’t really like the idea of God having any say in what I did with my life. Such was the particular combination of film, music and imagination I had began to embrace that my heart began to be turned away from wanting to follow Gods ways to wanting my own way. As soon as the opportunity presented itself, I fell away completely from the church for a time and involved myself in a hedonistic lifestyle. I was brought to a place of repentance over it but even after I had come back, something in me had shifted and I can see now that I had looked for happiness and fulfilment in success and relationships... and twenty years slid by.
During this period, I would (inwardly) mock and look down on street preachers in our local town who would often stand there warning of the “End Times” and shouting their bible quotes over the heads of the bemused and hostile shoppers. What a joke! I would assure myself that I was a “smart Christian” who saw things in the right perspective. Life was good and my plans were coming together nicely.
C.S. Lewis describes a man rebelling against God as being like the scent of the flower rebelling against the flower. For me, this new perspective had gradually eroded my joy and I was left a shadow of my younger, more spiritual self.
Following this, there was a long, painful time of deep repentance and reshaping. Either Jesus was Lord or I was, but it couldn’t be both. I read scores of books catching up on lost time and stunted spiritual growth. Around the time where people were talking about the “Blood Moons” I became aware that I had not bothered to share my faith with anyone, and that I had spent so many years as a “Camouflage Christian” that nobody would even realise what I believed! The old preachers adage came to me that if I was accused of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict me?
A few days later I woke up early and the sky was a mass of rolling red clouds. I took a photo because it impressed me so much.
I vaguely remembered that a red sky in the morning was mentioned in the Bible so I looked it up....
Matthew 16 New King James Version (NKJV)
“16 Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. 2 He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red’; 3 and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. 4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed.”
One of the books I had read during this period was the Vigilant Citizen expose of compiled website articles. It seemed very clear to me that the enemies of God were wholehearted and dedicated in their efforts, while I had been half-hearted in my commitment to the truths I claimed to believe.
Perhaps this place is not so much a forum for truth, but somewhere where truth and deception come more openly and sharply into conflict than they do in day to day interactions. I find myself drawn back here frequently because a great deal of truth is being shared here along with the promotion of lies and great wickedness, and, as the old adage goes, “all it takes for evil [if only text based] to triumph is for good men to do [or say] nothing”.