The day I got Saved

     By Emmet L.

One  Saturday  morning  2  neatly dressed guys called to my door.  This was strange,  as no-one in my area dressed in shirt & tie on Saturday morning.  They wanted  to  know if I had ever thought about what happens after I die.  This was it!  My chance to show these Bible bashers a thing or two.  I mean, I am a smart guy,  and  some  would call me an intellectual.  After all I had read philosophy and  discussed the universe into the wee hours in college.  I knew stuff.  These guys  were  brain  washed.   I  let them start.  And it was downhill for me from there.   The  Bible  is  the  word  of  God, they said.  Yea, but it was written hundreds  of  years  after  Jesus died, I replied.  Who says?  Well, my friends. Did  they  read the Bible? No.  Did I? No.  So how do you know?  The Bible was a parable,  a  metaphor  for  less  educated people, I said.  Do you mean that God doesn't tell the truth?, they said.

This  went on for a while, and I found myself deeper and deeper in trouble. All  my ideas about God, the after life, and the Bible were a mish-mash of ideas and  beliefs  I had heard over the years.  None of them had come from the Bible. I  mean  I  knew  I  was a sinner, everyone is (my father had always said "There wasn't  a  sinner there" to imply that there was no-one there), but I thought my good  deeds  would out-weigh my sins in the end.  I thought that I would pay-off any debt in purgatory.  God never said that.  People said that.

Over  and  over  again (yet for the first time) I saw passages in the Bible that  said  if  you  believe  Jesus  paid  for  your  sins,  then you would have everlasting  life.   It  wasn't  a single cryptic reference, it was all over the place!   How  had  I  never  seen it before?  Why didn't anyone tell me?  Then I remembered  all the people I had turned away from my door on previous occasions. Someone  had  really wanted to get through to me.  I invited the guys in, and we read  some  more.  After a while, they asked if I was ready to ask Jesus to save me, I said "Yes" (. . . at last).