Dear Jennifer,

Dear Jennifer,

Experiences Your Dad Remembers

Some of the following things I am certain that I have told you about in your younger years. But now that you have recently married, your mother and I are forced to realize that you are grown up. Perhaps some of these experiences will help build your faith during the coming years as you go about living your own Christian experiences.

I have been curious about what God expected of people from the time that I first considered that there was a Creator God. What would a loving God do with the billions of people who had differing concepts about who He was, or if He was, or even how many gods there are? How could God condemn people to hell for not pleasing Him when for all practical purposes He has been in hiding for most of the last 6000 years. Wouldnt it further His plan if He were to let us know what He wants?

The earliest spiritual conversation that I held with anyone, that I can recall, was with your patriarchal great grandfather, Wesley Martin. He had been a lifelong minister in the Nazarene Church. He helped get that church established early in the last century. He had even been a friend of the famous Bill Sunday, and I was told that that was a very good thing. I understood that he was highly revered by family and friends as a spiritual guide—and I had a problem. I decided that this time I would not sit on his lap when I spoke with him because this was going to be a serious conversation. So I sat close to him on his left side and challenged the idea that a loving God would torture people forever in an ever burning hell fire. I knew that he would not be happy with me because of this challenge but I couldnt let that stop me. The Creator’s plan was important to me. If He could build the universe in a week then He must be smart enough to realize that eternal torture was a bad idea, I reasoned. He tried his best to assure me that hell was a good thing, however we just couldnt agree.

A couple of years later I remember sitting in Sunday school and singing a song that contained the words “I may never fight in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery but I’m in the Lord’s army”. But I was singing “I WILL never fight” so loudly that I didnt even realize that everyone else was singing “may never”. They stopped me and informed me that the words were “I may never fight”. I was horrified that they might indeed fight and kill other people, so I kept on singing—“I will never fight”!

I lived my first 13 years on a street full of [people of a particular religion]. I was a natural target for every kid who wanted to show off. When they would hit me or throw stones and bricks at me I would never fight back. Somehow I had become a pacifist even tho no one had ever influenced me in that direction. It was a terrible place to grow up. I used to walk a mile to school because I felt safer alone than on a bus full of kids. On occasions the neighbors would threaten me with guns and other weapons. Once someone left a live WW2 hand grenade by the gravel pit that I walked by daily. I showed it to another guy and we took it to school. Back then, we were considered a “good boys” for taking it to school to give to the teacher.

Because of my situation, I hid in our basement for most of my first thirteen years that we lived on Bishop Ave. I called myself “a cellar dweller”. In that basement was a large number of college textbooks and many religious reference books. These books became my only friends. The only book that I could not get thru was Fox’s Book of Martyrs. I became keenly interested in “Christianity”. You might say that I did not have a normal childhood. My mother said that I was never a child.

I never saw much of my father. He was one of the most important nuclear scientists at the now condemned Fernald Atomic plant. By the time he was forty three years old, the year that he died, he was in charge of his own Top Secret atomic operation in Houston Texas. All I knew for sure about his work, during my youth, was that on the occasions when my mother took him to work, there were armed guards and steel bars. That seemed normal to me because from my earliest years, when I would on occasion see my grandfather Roth’s place of employment, at the Marion Power Shovel plant, they had steel barred windows as well, and for the longest time I thought that grandma took him to jail daily.

I had become quite withdrawn from people even before I started into school. I made a game of seeing how many school years I could go without speaking to the teachers in class, and most years I “won”. I liked and respected most of my grade school teachers, but I thought that it showed weakness to “beg” for help. One of the first papers that I had to write in school really destroyed any hope that I might have ever had of developing a use for teachers; from then on I did not trust them. When I was about ten years old, I was accused of plagiarism. I distinctly remember the teacher saying: “You could not have possibly written that.” For my remaining years in school, I refused to talk to teachers except to answer questions specifically addressed to me, and for the next 36 years, I refused to express any significant thoughts in writing, with just a couple of exceptions: a fourteen page letter to my “mentor” J.I. Rodale concerning Biblical dietary laws when I was an early teen, and two published articles to show Jeremy [My son] how easy it is to get published.

I had been taught that the Nazarene Church was the “best” church because they taught that so many more things were sinful than the other “liberal” churches. They also taught that not only were they “saved” like the other churches, but better yet, they could also be “sanctified”. I never could figure out exactly what evidence we were to have to know for certain that we really were “right with God”. Very often I would respond to an emotional altar call, only to be greatly disappointed afterward when “nothing happened”. I told people that I was sure that I was the same person as I had been before I made the trip down the church isle. Other people would jump up and down or even run laps around the “sanctuary”. There was whooping and “praises” and great displays of emotion but it never “took” with me, no matter how much I wanted to know that at least God loved me.

I began to learn that many of the teachings that I had been brought up with were not Biblical. I thought that it would take me the rest of my life to figure out which portions of my “inherited” religion were right and which were not right, as well as answer all of the things I hadnt thought to ask yet!

I had seriously contemplated becoming an ascetic monk, but I had no use for Catholicism and didnt know where I would fit in. I told a friend of my parents (whom they had asked to council me) that perhaps the Puritans had been right, being so fervently religious, and that perhaps I might have to become the only one of the century. When I was nineteen, I bought a remote eight acre woods with my life’s savings and intended to stay on it for the rest of my life, subsisting on eatable “weeds” of which I was fairly knowledgeable and living in the $300 dollar home that I had built. I craved peace and quiet until I had it. The quiet life was not nearly as good as I had hoped for, so I made the woods my second home. I was only a hermit for three days before I decided that I couldnt stand being alone!

I had been convinced that I needed to be baptized and I didnt want to baptize myself, so I decided to have the Nazarenes do it for me. I loved the people there and my friends at church were happy that I had made that choice. However when the minister failed to lay hands on me, I was really bothered and decided that I would quit attending!

My biggest fear was that the Sabbath truly was on Saturday, as a casual brief study began to reveal to me. That is the one topic that I did not want to be true because I thought that I would lose all of my friends if it were truly on a day when only “Jews and Adventists” were in church, and I was pretty sure that I didnt want to be one of them.

By 1972 I was working in a steel mill in Marion Ohio. I had happened upon an offer for a Sabbath booklet, and I had worked up the courage to send for it. The Sabbath booklet arrived on a Thursday. I read it entirely that evening and decided that I would rest on the next Sabbath—some how. The next day I was walking thru another department, on my break, when I overheard a conversation by a guy who was explaining some unique teachings of [the organization] that published the Sabbath booklet. After the other guys left, I asked the fellow if he would tell me where he got those ideas. He was quite reluctant to say. Then I said to him that I was sure that he got it from the [a particular sect]. When I put it that way he reluctantly admitted his source. Then he surprised me by mentioning that there was “a Church in Columbus”. I was shocked. He told me that he didnt know where it was but that his brother-in-law had visited it. I then found out where the brother-in-law lived and went there after work. Just after the brother-in-law gave me the address and time, I was ready to begin keeping my first Sabbath—starting at sundown when I got home from his house!

The next morning I arrived at the exclusivist Sabbatarian Church, and tried to walk in just as hundreds of others were doing, only to be stopped at the door by a deacon. After questioning me he then tried to get me to leave! I assured him that I was going to keep the Sabbath there whether he was happy about it or not! He then proceeded to explain their teachings in such a bad light that I would want to leave on my own! When I still did not leave, he admitted that he had just made up part of what he had just said! He then asked me if I knew [the minister]; I said that I did, but did not comment further. Actually, all I knew about him was his name. [The deacon] then thought that apparently I must have been acquainted with [the minister]. Months later [the deacon] told me that he would have forced me to leave were it not for his thinking that I had already been in contact with the minister. (Police intervention is how it was handled then.) But [the minister] had a chip on his shoulder and refused to speak with me, or even be civil with me, for the several month conclusion of his assignment in Columbus, because I had bypassed his authority to attend. I was the first person to begin attending their exclusive meetings in Columbus OH—uninvited—just as their extreme exclusivity policy was being abolished by their headquarters. However, once during that time I asked someone to invite the associate minister to their home so that I could (surprise) be there and ask some questions. (It was only after twenty-eight years of attendance that I got that long awaited personal consultation from one of their ministers, now a minister from [one their latest major factions] in my home.)

It was during these circumstances that I “counciled” for baptism. I cornered [the associate minister] one day, after the assembly, and without stopping to let him possibly argue with me, I listed all of the reasons why I wanted to be baptized. When I finished thoroly explaining how I felt, he had only one question for me. He asked me if I were keeping the commandments. When I said “yes”, he included me on the list of a dozen others who would be baptized that month. To my horror, despite the fact that this group was non Trinitarian, they baptized me “into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit”. Constantine would have been proud!

My trials really started piling up after I walked thru that church door. My union job became an immediate problem and most of my formerly close relatives were convinced that I had joined a cult. I was fired after attending my first Feast of Tabernacles, but I waged my first civil rights suit and won back the privilege to work for them again. I decided not keep my “bid” job but rather to stay in the “labor pool” so that I wouldnt be a burden to them. I just filled in for others who were absent or when some nasty work needed to be done. Several times I had to crawl into holes or pollution control devices and become the human cork screw to free up the clogs. Often my entire body was pitch black.

One day, shortly after I was baptized, I was working just outside of the steel mill whacking the weeds in the middle of the railroad tracks. The mill was very noisy with heavy machinery clattering and with banging steel. The ground literally shook where I was working perhaps fifty feet away. There were no walls on the building which allowed the excessive noise to escape. All of that thundering noise was enough to disguise the noise coming from the locomotive fast approaching me from behind. Instantaneously, I found myself lying flat on my back inches from the passing locomotive. I was looking straight up at Virgil, the engineer, who was intently gazing ahead—as if I were not even there. Immediately, I realized that God had performed two miracles. Had I been smashed by that locomotive, I might have been hurt! Secondly, the fact that Virgil could not see me when I had, just seconds before, been standing square in the middle of the track, with my back to him, indicated to me that I was invisible to him! Later that afternoon, as I was back on the tracks whacking more weeds, I was thinking about the miraculous occurrence and wondering whether I should ask Virgil if he had possibly seen anything unusual. Of course I was being more careful now, I was facing the direction of trains entering the loading area and glancing up from time to time. Suddenly I found myself lying on my back again. Talk about dejavu! The exact same thing had happened again, but he came from the other direction! Virgil was straight up from my point of view, with his arm again resting on the side of the cab, as he intently gazed ahead of me, the invisible man. This was a mirror image of what had been burned into my memory only hours before. I never did tell Virgil what happened, but I did wander into his little shop later in the day to see if he had anything to say. He didnt, and I didnt.

I have had more than my fair share of miracles since then, it actually does little good to tell them to many people. It is like being Jacob saying that he was special to his father. While no one has tried to kill me or toss me into a dry well, they do give me that nut-case-stare if I mention miracles. Another miracle I want you to know about is that a few years ago I was high on a ladder painting in high wind. A strong gust came along and blew the ladder over. The ladder slid quickly across the freshly sprayed wet paint, as if it were sliding on grease. When it had fallen over to about a 45 degree angle it screeched to a stop! I quickly climbed down from the ladder and then it continued its fall while it was still in my hands! There was not so much as a loose nail to slow its fall.

My recollections from that Sabbatarian sect would not be complete without mentioning that I was excommunicated from it in 1993, ironically for believing in one of the teachings that had originally brought me into that church; namely believing that the Trinity is a false god. As a child, I had thoroughly examined that teaching and proven it to be of pagan origin. When I began to be exposed to it again, twenty some years later, I couldnt keep quiet about it. When they tried to disguise the doctrine of the Trinity by calling it the “hypostasis”, I looked the word up in Webster’s dictionary. One of the meanings of the word is: “a sediment or deposit, as from urine or blood”. That is what they wanted for me to worship! I began explaining the doctrinal change to all of my friends in Columbus until the point where I felt that I would be excommunicated the next time I showed up. Then I decided to go to the Mansfield church and get in a few licks there. I told my friends there that they were worshiping “urine sediment” and that they should look into it! That was my last Sabbath with [that corporate sect]. Under conditions of apostasy, I easily decided that I’d rather try to pull some people out of the fire than not even try.

A few years later I wanted [a major splinter sect from the nearly disbanded original group] to address some doctrinal considerations that I had submitted to them in writing, thinking that they might be more open minded. I sent what has now become chapters of my book to various leaders over a considerable period of time with no comment except for a few jabs from the pulpit. Once I got dishonorable mention (not by name) during a Feast of Tabernacles sermon by [an evangelist] shortly after he received my findings on, among other things, the death of Satan, which he ridiculed. I decided that I had better start looking for another Church, in case I got the boot again. I began to consider my options. Shortly afterward I came across a magazine article that I did not want to read. Your mother, however, asked me to read it on two occasions. So I sat down and looked at it. Immediately I knew that I was in trouble.

I had seen some genuine truths about the Jewish Calendar, presented by a tiny group of extreme exclusivists who claimed to be the only true “Philadelphian’s” while claiming that [another group] was the only “Laodicean” group. For the next few hours I gathered as much information about the subject as possible, via the Internet, and in desperation I even asked [someone who thinks I’m crazy] for more source material. This was certainly not something that I had hoped to find, but I immediately decided that I would not “postpone” study on the annual Sabbaths as I had done during my teen years concerning the weekly Sabbaths. Within twenty four hours I was positive that I would be keeping the Feast days on different days than I had ever done. Ironically, I had thought to study into the Jewish calendar as soon as I began to keep the Sabbath, so as not to be fooled again, however my church had so completely won my trust that they nearly derailed my “train” of independent thought, and I essentially trusted ministers for the next 27 years. I had allowed my train incident, among other things, to convince me that the church I supported was the reason that my life was spared.

After trying for a couple of years to attract the attention of the ministry, as tho I were jumping up and down and waving my hands, ironically I now had a new truth that I wasnt going to mention! I knew that acknowledging that the Jews had tampered with the very “calendar” that God ordained to determine when His Holy Days fall on was considered heresy. (Despite the fact that the Jews’ own Encyclopedia Judaica details the breach.) I only told family, but as you know, three can keep a secret only if two of them are dead! Almost immediately I endured eight consecutive sermons that condemned “calendar traitors”. So I decided it was time to leave again, only this time I left before being forced.

As a result of looking for that “second best church”, I found myself on a lifelong quest of seeking out the many mysterious truths of the everlasting kingdom—after a quarter of a century of checking my brain in at the doors of a “church”.

Here is an article from Jennifer concerning the question: Should Christians Eat at Restaurants on the Sabbath?