UNDATED ENTRY (PUT UNDER SEPTEMBER)

From memory:

(I pray with students around the flagpole.)

              When I say 'pray' I don't pray to God per se but to some upper entity who could be Zeus for all I know.

Comment: This was back around 1998/ early '99.  I will never forget those words I wrote or the way in which I came to a basic belief in God, THE God of the Bible and His Christ, and to mentally assent to thinking for 21 years that I had Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and details, sketchy as they may be, and how that head knowledge became heart knowledge and I became a True believer in a three year process 2019-2021. I went to a Bible Study in my Sophomore year but this only made me a believing practical pagan.  I thought I was basically a good kid.  I didn't drink, smoke and was a virgin as I still am in 2021 AD (which was, in 1999, to my way of thinking, the key to living a good life, that and a doing and avoiding a few other things.)  I wasn't at the time concerned with heaven, hell or salvation, and knew absolutely nothing of the higher things of God, such as Zion or Celestial Glory.  I remember that it was that year that I read the first 40 chapters of Genesis in my Grandma Marge's old blue King James Bible.  I also checked a bible out of the high school library to use at the Bible study, which was after hours at my High School at 2:15 PM on the upstairs floor, just after the end of sixth period.   At first I kind of mentallty assented to the lessons being taught at the lawyer's Bible study, although there were liberal leanings in Mike Thomas's brand of Theology. I just assented to all of it, enjoying the insightful teaching, but never truly believed or had Christ in my heart , even after I was baptized twice, until October of 2019 AD. (or at least all these years I had thought I had been led in the Sinner's prayer by a man named Wade, until a dream I had in 2019 revealed this did not happen, and I first truly received Christ with the conviction I needed to in October of 2019, 21 years after 1999 AD). In 1999 AD, while I was attending that Pure Fire Bible Study, Dad opened a letter sent by Mike the lawyer that stated that Mike was going to pray for a man to suffer until he turned to Christ, which there was nothing at all wrong with, but Dad made a big bruhaha out of the matter, telling me the Bible study was a cult as Mike told me the RLDS was cultish (My Dad or my father Lee Allen Sohlden is a good man who was not bad because of his misunderstanding, but was only looking out for my best interests.). I submitted an article to the school paper promising repercussions if not printed, and a group of misguided but well meaning teens ganged up on me and told me some "Christian" purist things and told me the article was offensive (which it certainly was and I am sorry for writing it) and handed me a tract, which a well meaning atheist told me I shouldn't let them shove such sh-- down my throat, then he handed  the tract back to me, and the tract ran something like this:

THE FOUR SPIRITUAL LAWS

1) God loves you and offers a wonderful  plan for your life.

2) Man is sinful and separated from God.  Therefore, he cannot know and experience God's love and plan for his life.

GOD
___________________-
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                    ____
                       |
                       |
                       | 
_____________________________

MAN

MAN WITH CHRIST


GOD
_______________________________________-




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MAN'S EFFORTS WITHOUT CHRIST

(Jesus brings men to His Father)

3) Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin. Through Him you can know and experience God's love and plan for youre life.


4) We must individually receive  Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.(-©1965-2013 Bill Bright. All Rights Reserved. I claim FAIR USE for transformative purposes.-BLSKJ"study3600""FinalWarning"V)


, which I do believe in now.  My grandmother, Marge Sohlden, put doubt in my heart by telling me this was wrong, then men paid for their own sins and that the Bible was written by men (My grandmother, Marjorie May (Lehman) Sohlden was a good woman with a good heart who just had some doubts, which did not make her a bad woman.).  Despite all this I kept going to the group where I asked a man named Wade some questions once and he gave me a personal NIV Bible and I developed a false memory of him leading me in the sinner's prayer which never really happened with the conviction that I needed it until 2019 AD, in October, 13 years after my first True Baptism and Confirmation in November 2005.  As a consequence of playing the part of Believer, I, as would my half sister later, though Dad was well meaning,  received persecution from my dad.  But I forgave him.  I was very overzealous, and my dad did help me in my semibelieving walk by drilling into me the law of love (the greatest commandment and the second) and protecting me from believing that satan was good and God was bad by rebuking me sharply the very brief time I thought this. (Also see Letter of Aristeas 1:26-BLSKV.)
 Later Dad tried teaching me how to tithe properly, and from 2009-2015 he took me to many churches, and also a few times to two RLDS Church branches of the Restoration Brach Movement in Michigan, and to my Grandma Marge Sohlden's Memorial Service at the Clio Rd. Community of Christ in Vassar Michigan, the new location of the Westwood Congregation that my grandparents Wil and Marge Sohlden used to take my half sister and I to as children, where my Grandfather, Toivo Wilfred Sohlden Koivopolo III, ordained as a Priest in 1966 and later superannuated, served as a Minister.  The  Memorial Service was beautiful and Spirit filled and I reconciled with a woman I had once wronged there.

Last edited by Admin (7/25/2023 8:00 pm)