True Power Revealed
I wasn’t long before I was spent. I was more powerful than ever. I was mastering new spiritual gifts with ease. I believed it wouldn’t be long before I could do nearly anything I wanted. Yet, at the same time, I was miserable. In my mind, I was nearly a god, but I still had that one pesky sin couldn't be resolved by Karma.
Susan and Liar tried to take my mind off of it with all of the reincarnation stuff. Gloria said that I needed to make the choice to toss away this useless burden. Liar said if I was to follow my destiny, I needed to harden my heart and let go of the past. However, the rift in my heart was something I couldn't just let go. I was torn between two incompatible world views. I’d been taught one by Liar for what seemed like my entire life. The other was something I knew in my heart to be true, no matter how much I tried to deny it.
One day in early spring that year, when I was the midst of struggling with all this, there was a group of students open-air preaching on campus. Liar told me to go over and heckle them, which I happily did. Heckling Christians who were foolish enough to preach on campus was just the type of fun distraction I could use. I went over to where they were preaching and started listening for holes in their argument to rip it to pieces like I did with the others. However, the speaker said something I didn’t expect: “Jesus loves you.”
That surprised me. If the God of the Bible was true, surely He’d hate me. Liar was telling me to yell at them, but I wanted to hear more. Instead of heckling them, hiding behind a wall of pride or trying to find weak points in his arguments I could exploit, I listened to everything the speaker had to say.
He said that Jesus loved us so much that, even though He lived a life without sin, He went willingly to the cross to die for us, to pay the price for our sins in our place. He broke the chains of sin and death by rising from the grave, and He’s alive even now. As a result, we can place our sins on His shoulders by having faith, accepting His sacrifice on our behalf and making him the Lord of our lives. I knew I’d heard this many times in previous debates, but this time, it made sense. I wanted to learn more.
Liar was livid. He wanted me to mock them, to scream at them, to derail their teachings, but instead of doing any of those things, I accepted an invitation to their Bible study meeting that afternoon. Liar was apoplectic and let me know exactly what he thought about attending that Bible study with lots of screaming in my head. However, I was done listening to him. I finally found a possible solution to the problem that had been vexing me for years and Liar’s screaming wasn’t going to stop me from attending that Bible study.
At the Bible study, they were studying the book of Daniel, chapter 3. In that chapter, three men were thrown into a burning furnace by Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to bow down to a gold idol made in his image. Yet, rather than burning alive as the king expected, they were saved by one who had the appearance of "a son of the gods." That intrigued me. Was that an image of Christ even before His birth? Was it an angel? I wanted to learn more. So, despite Liar's vitriolic abuse, I returned next week when they were studying Daniel chapter 4.
That chapter shocked me to the core. It's the story of how Nebuchadnezzar, one of the most evil and prideful men in all of history, was judged by God and had his sanity taken away. He was driven from his throne and from civilization entirely for seven years. At the conclusion of that chapter, he repented of his sins and God responded to his repentance. He received his sanity back and even regained the throne. Even though he was guilty of murdering countless Jews and destroying the Temple of God in Jerusalem, God gave him mercy and measure of salvation (howbeit, a worldly one for the moment, for Jesus hadn't yet been crucified) when he humbled himself and repented.
That opened my eyes. God’s judgement of Nebuchadnezzar wasn’t an act of hatred, but an act of love. God’s judgement led directly to his repentance. As evil as this man was, God still loved him and was still willing to save him. Here, in the Old Testament hundreds of years before Jesus was born, was the clear and unambiguous message of the Gospel: a wicked pagan king was shown the saving grace of Christ's love, hundreds of years before Christ Himself was born! If God could go so far as loving Nebuchadnezzar, then surely He could love me. If the salvation of Jesus Christ can transcend time and space to save this wicked ruler, then surely I too could be saved.
Liar was my best friend no longer. He taunted me and tried to keep me from doing what was in my heart, but it was to no avail. Immediately after the Bible study was over, I went to an empty area of campus and prayed to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior. Two days later, I talked to Susan and confessed to her my decision to accept Jesus into my life. To my surprise, she told me that it was no problem; there are many Christians in New Age groups. She said that I could continue to come to the meetings and Gloria wouldn't hold anything against me.
For the first time in my life, I felt the presence of the Spirit in my life. The Spirit testified to me that I can never go back, even though I had no reason to know that. I told Susan that I would never return. Even though Susan and I were never intimate, she took it like a jilted lover. She was furious and reminded me that I made a promise to her in a previous life. I wanted to tell her that it was unreasonable to expect I would be bound by that type of promise, but the Spirit prompted me to just say goodbye and leave, so that’s what I did. I never returned. Susan left the campus a year later and I never saw her again. Tom accepted the news with a little disappointment, because he knew that I wouldn't be doing any more rituals for him. I saw him on campus occasionally until I graduated, but after that point we had different sets of friends, so we almost never spoke.
By far, the worst reaction to this news was Liar’s. Even after my conversion, he was still in my head, and he wasn’t going to leave willingly. The entire time I knew him up until the moment I accepted Christ, he pretended to be either an angel of light or even God Himself, but now the mask was off. I had no doubt about what he really was. He was a demon, a fallen angel, and a rather foul-mouthed one at that. To say he was furious is a gross understatement!
