I was raised to not believe in Jesus and was in 1966 a self proclaimed atheist. That was my condition and I will not labor on the point to enumerate all the crimes and sins I had committed to reach this point. Suffice it to say that my mother was in and out of prison, my brother was an excon and incest was just a way of life in my family.

On September the third, 1966 at 8:00 am. I found my self in the street of my Company Area in An Khe, Viet Nam. We had suffered a terrible mortar attack that night and a man that I loved more than a brother had been killed and I was certain that I was to blame because I had paid his bar tab that night since he was broke. I had found him with his head blown from his body into a 155mm shell case that he had used for a bookcase and his body looked like hamburger from the mortar that hit him in the chest. I stood there and cursed the God that I claimed not to believe in, and I was in very deep pain. There was no one with in a hundred feet of me when a voice spoke to me and asked, "Why curse me? You don't even believe." I do not claim it to have been an audible voice, I do not believe anyone else could have heard it, it was God and He was speaking only to me and only for me. I started to run from that day until Jan 1, 1991. I did everything that I could think of to make God go away and leave me alone, He wouldn't.

I have been known to scare people so bad that they would move away from me just knowing that I was going to die. I would stand on top of a newly built house frame on the 1 1/2" ridge board and stoned out of my mind I would beg God to show these idiots his power and kill me. You see I was in a great deal of pain and I knew that God didn't have a space in Heaven for me and I truely wished to just go to Hell and get it over with.

You see God had revealed himself to me, and I knew just enough about him to know that He could not stand sin and I knew that I was a liar, a cheat, a thief, and I certainly had killed people after 2 1/2 years in Viet Nam, and I had seen Sgt. York. My theology was not really based on the Bible, and I knew that a Holy God had no use for me and I couldn't understand why God would not go away and let me just go on to hell.

There I was on December 31, 1990, singing to a bunch of drunks in a bar in Humble, Texas. My third marriage just dissolved, my son lost to drugs, my truck repossessed and not two nickels to my name to rub together. The clock strikes Midnight and I begin to sing the ageless standard and the HOLY SPIRIT comes over me. I finished that song and picked up my equipment amid threats and walked out without my pay and I didn't care. I didn't and I don't to this day understand it but I knew that Jesus loved me and I was forgiven. I was on my way to the glory land, and I wanted to be in church that morning as it was Sunday, and I had a lot to learn about a God that would love me enough to send His only Son to die for someone like me.

Today I serve God by attending church at Wildwood Baptist Church in Pinehurst, Texas. There I back the music director, sing special music teach and go to the prison once in a while to minister to those who like myself, need God.

If you are in need of a good, full featured, Bible program I suggest e-Sword and if you are tight for space or you just need a fast and small Bible program I reccomend The Berean Bible.

If you are anything like me and you need some information about what to do to get yourself out of the mess that you find yourself in I suggest the following scriptures:

Rom. 3:23. For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.

If you and I were to step into your yard with baseballs in our hands and we were to throw them at the White House, one of us would throw that ball a few feet farther than the other but neither one of us would break a White House window. It's that same way with God. I might be a little better (or worse) than you for serving the Savior, but because I have sinned and Gods standard is perfection (we cannot measure ourselves against any other standard and successfully find our condition) I cannot measure up to the Heavenly Standard. I am absolutly certain that niether can you.

Rom. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

When you get a job and you go there for a week and you work every day then your emploier owes you your paycheck. It is the same way with God. He gave to Moses the Ten Commandments, that we might know sin and not live in it. Yet each one of us, right down to your basic Sunday Morning Pastor, has sinned no matter how hard we try not to. We therefore deserve the second death which is eternal separation from God, a never ending exitance in The Lake of Fire, Hell.

OH BUT THE SECOND PART OF THAT TEXT. You need to understand that Jesus went to that cross willingly and that he went there for the payment of the debt that you owe to God (eternal death), and that He loves you so much that if no one else but you would have been saved, He still would have been found on that Cross. Your sins have been paid for and you need only to accept that payment.

Rom.10:9. That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

V:10. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

I would suggest to you now,pray a simple prayer to God, asking for forgivness and eternal life, which is to live that same predestinned eternal life in Heaven with God instead of in Hell where God never meant for man to be. I beg of you to obtain a Bible and read it for yourself, starting with the book of John in the new testament. Then go to several churches and speak to the pastor on a one on one basis and find out what he teaches. If he gives you scriptures, as I have here, I beg of you to read the whole paragraph or chapter and see if that is what God truly said. Then pick one that teaches the truth of the Bible.