...Of Water and The Spirit

"That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;" (Ephesians 4:14) “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (John 3:5-6)

In the first part of my testimony concerning my reversion to the Catholic Church I talked about my birth and life as a cradle Catholic in the pre-Vatican II days…as well as a little bit about my departure from the Church. As I left for the Air Force, I still somewhat considered myself an agnostic, but the Lord was beginning to work in my heart to bring me into a true relationship with Him.

I should mention that there is much more to many aspects of my story, but given the understandable word limits these articles are kind of a highlights ree,l so to speak, leading up to the final article of the series that deals with my reversion. Plus I need to save something for the book. LOL

In the latter part of my high school days I used to amuse myself late at night listening to the “fire and brimstone” preachers on WWVA out of Wheeling, WV. I had no exposure to such things and their “amen” corner that accompanied very point in the sermon sounded strange to me. After all, in the Catholic Church of that time no one even spoke let alone shouted encouragement to the priest. This interest would soon prove important.

My first duty station after Basic Training was Langley AFB in Hampton, VA. Shortly after my arrival there, I began seeing signs for a Crusade by an evangelist named Bob Harrington, who was called “The Chaplain of Bourbon Street”. I thought he would be like those folks I had heard on the radio and it would be a laugh to see one in person. Such, however, was not the case. One of the people that I worked with was going to it, so I decided to tag along.

Bob’s message the first night was titled, “It’s Fun Being Saved”. This was a new concept to me: fun and religion. I saw nothing fun about my Catholicism. Most of what I saw around me seemed like duty and obligation and, let’s face it: torture. Very few people showed “joy” at that time in the Church. To be honest many faces looked like they had eaten a green persimmon or had stepped on something on the sidewalk. But now here were these folks laughing and apparently truly enjoying their religion. I think this is an important lesson for us to bear in mind as talk of “The New Evangelism”. The very first tool we have with which to evangelize is our face and our lives. I’ll address this more in the next article.

The second night the topic was much more serious. Bob preached on the Second Coming, God’s wrath being poured out on the Earth and the possibility that the Lord could very well return that night. I had never heard such a thing. It wasn’t discussed in the Church. In fact when anyone spoke about the return of the Lord it was in terms of perhaps a thousand years or two. I knew that should it happen that night I wasn’t ready. When the invitation was given I went forward to give my heart to the Lord. I wish I could say it was all upwards spiritually after that, but the first couple years were rocky and inconsistent. But now I had what I had lacked in my earlier days: a personal relationship with God through Christ Jesus.

This was the beginning of my nearly 40 years as an Evangelical Christian. During that time I went from a babe in Christ to become a teacher, preacher, pastor and evangelist in various churches and denominations. I graduated from Central Christian College of the Bible in Moberly, MO with a Bachelor of Science in Biblical Studies. My biggest ministry, however, was in the field of Apologetics…what we believe and why we believe it. It was my expertise in that field that would start to lay the ground work for my eventual reversion. In the next section of this article I will talk about the reasons for my return to the Church.