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Raised in a strict fundamentalist household, I recall getting saved over and over again as a child, just to be sure I got it right. I lived in abject terror of the second coming and being left behind. When I was around 15, a couple of circuit preachers began a so-called “series of meetings†at our place of worship. These gospel meetings took place six nights a week for a period of about six weeks straight. They included real “hell-fire†sermons which could be quite terrifying. People I knew began getting saved around me and I began to question my own salvation. The two preachers took me aside and asked me to describe my salvation experience. I told them that I had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my own personal Savior. After I finished the elder of the two announced that he was afraid that I was not saved because he did not think I had been “convicted†of my sin. How he knew this he did not say, nor was a Scriptural basis for the conviction requirement provided, but of course I took his words to heart. So I muddled along for a few days feeling tremendous pressure to get saved. After a time I made a profession of salvation. The normal course of events was for the newly saved to get baptized by immersion, a prerequisite for joining the “assembly†and participating in the worship service. But I was still uncertain of my salvation and did not request baptism, much to the surprise of my parents and the other adults in my life. I continued on agonizing about all this for a couple of years until one day I said to myself in so many words “I’m sick of this and I’m not going to worry about it anymore.†A sense of peace came over me immediately and stayed. For many years I thought the Spirit of God had ceased striving with me (Genesis 6:3).
In time I joined the military and left home for good, still believing the fundamentalist teachings of my youth but somehow unable to come to grips with them or apply them in my own life. With the passage of time and exposure to other cultures, ideas, and beliefs I began to seriously question many of those teachings and eventually set them aside.
Having said all this, I don’t question the sincerity of the others who posted up there. But this is how it played out for me.
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In time I joined the military and left home for good, still believing the fundamentalist teachings of my youth but somehow unable to come to grips with them or apply them in my own life. With the passage of time and exposure to other cultures, ideas, and beliefs I began to seriously question many of those teachings and eventually set them aside.
Having said all this, I don’t question the sincerity of the others who posted up there. But this is how it played out for me.
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