Sometimes I think about how I want to get this story written ever so carefully, not to miss any possible important points. But then recently it has been hitting me more and more just how urgent it is to at least get the gist of it out there, and leave the rest to God. It’s a matter of life and death.
The other day, I spoke with a woman who for the past several years has owned a local business that has blessed my family and me many times with nice clothing we couldn’t otherwise afford. She told me she has terminal cancer and so she is closing her consignment shop. What hard news that is for us as her customers, and I can only imagine how infinitesimally more difficult it is for her family and for herself. After I left her shop, I could not stop thinking about digging out this old document to finish it and hit the WordPress “publish” button for whoever needs to read it. None of us know how many breaths we have left in this world.
Here is what has been sitting in draft mode on my blog dashboard for I don’t know how long now. It all started in 1987 when I was twenty:
Late summer sun rays filtered onto my face through the tangle of grape leaves which climbed over the trellises my dad had built in our yard in Tsawwassen, BC. I reached up to pluck a few more clusters of the pale green fruit to top off my nearly full basket. Satisfied that I had plenty, I climbed the stairs to the porch and brought my harvest into the kitchen of the house my carpenter father had built, where I endeavored to turn sour grapes into sweet jam.
I heard my dad’s van start up and l looked out the window to see him drive away, wondering where he’d be going on a Sunday afternoon. Wherever his destination was, I noted with annoyance that he had forgotten to turn off the TV, and I intended to shut it off myself as soon as I was done with the procedure at hand.
Bits of televised dialogue reached my ears as I stirred the pot of jam. I thought I heard someone mention Ozzy Osbourne. My curiosity alerted, I peered around the stove and through the doorway at the TV to see if I had heard correctly. There was a preacher talking about heavy metal, calling it “music of the devil”.
I listened in disgust as they tore apart bands I so passionately loved. My blood boiled along with the jam. Turning off the stove, I grabbed the phone and vehemently punched out the number that appeared on the screen. ” Call my music demonic, will you? Well, wait till I tell YOU a thing or two!”
“Good afternoon, and thank you for calling Sundayline,” answered a kind male voice that turned away some of the harshness I intended to use in my speech, but not all of it.
“Yeah, hi,” I said. “What exactly did that preacher mean about Ozzy Osbourne’s music being ‘of the devil’? You know, I have some of his records, and he’s even got some songs that talk about the Lord, so how can you guys say those things about him?”
I was ready for a fight. But the guy was evidently unaffected by my anger as he calmly answered. “I have a brother who’s into heavy metal, so I’m familiar with a lot of it. What song does Ozzy Osbourne have that talks about the Lord?”
“Well, there’s Lord Of This World,” I said.
“Do you know who the lord of this world is?”
“God. Right?”
“No,” he said. “The Bible tells us that it’s Satan.”
“Get serious. How can Satan be the lord of this world?”
I’d never read the Bible, yet I wasn’t totally ignorant as to who God and the devil are, most of my information, however, having come from books, movies, and songs.
“The lord of this world is Satan,” he reiterated, then he asked, “Do you have a Bible handy? I can show you where it says that.”
“Yeah, I think there’s one around here somewhere,” I said.
“If you want to go grab it, I’ll wait.”
I put the phone down and searched for the old black Bible my Serbian-born dad had received when he became a Canadian citizen. As I carried it to the phone, I remembered one time I’d tried to read it, in school while I was in grade eleven. A guy I knew had opened my locker, saw it there, and immediately slammed the door shut with a scared look on his face. I never did understand why he reacted like that to a mere book. Admittedly, it was hard writing for me to understand at the time.
“OK, I got it,” I said when I came back to the phone. “I’ve tried to read this a few times, but I had such difficulty following the storyline. It gets so confusing.”
“Where did you start reading?” he asked.
“Well, the beginning, of course…” I flipped to the front of the book. “Right here. The chapter called ‘Genesis’. How come none of the chapters connect with the other chapters, like they don’t pick up where the last one left off?”
“I think what you’re referring to is the book names, not chapters. The Bible is actually 66 books written by various people over the course of many centuries, but they’re all tied in together as they all point to Jesus.”
“Ahh,” I said, fascinated by this information I had never heard.
“Have you ever tried reading the New Testament?” he asked. “It’s easier to understand than the Old Testament when you’re new to the Bible.”
“I don’t think so. What’s the New Testament? Is that some other kind of Bible?”
He explained how the Old Testament points towards the coming Messiah, who would reconcile man to God, and that the New Testament is what was written after He had arrived in bodily form on earth.
Another question I had was, “What does it mean when I see those Bible names and some numbers beside them that look like the time, like ‘Genesis 22:5’ for example?”
“That means the name of the book in the Bible, and the chapter and verse number, so it’s easy for people to locate certain passages of Scripture. See in your Bible how every verse is numbered?”
A light went on in my head as it suddenly made sense. “Oh, I get it! Boy do I feel stupid!”
He didn’t treat me like a dummy, though, and he patiently answered all my questions. He then explained to me, while having me look up certain verses to see for myself, how Satan is the lord of this world – “this world” meaning the earth, which has been tainted by sin ever since the serpent beguiled Eve, as opposed to God’s kingdom – heaven – where sin doesn’t exist.
He told me to turn to more chapters and verses, where I read things I had never heard. When he led me to the book of Peter, he told me that Peter was a fisherman. That caught my attention in a big way, since my boyfriend at the time was a commercial fisherman.
Upon discovering Peter, I started to feel like maybe I could relate to somebody in the Bible, like there were real people back in those days. It had always been my impression that the Bible was full of fictitious ethereal spirits and stoical, lofty, religious characters that were nothing like people of today.
The man on the phone asked me if I knew how to get to heaven. I thought about it for a minute, then ventured, “I guess by living a good life . . . and getting baptized. I know I’ve done some bad things in my life, but I’m not as bad as a lot of other people. And I was baptized when I was a baby, at the Anglican church. I’ve done lots of good things, too. And I’ve gone to church with my mom a few times. I’ve always believed in God.”
“None of that will get you to heaven,” he told me. “Do you know who Jesus is?”
“Hmm, sort of. He was God’s son, right?”
“Yep, that’s right,” he said. “And do you know what He did for you?”
“For me?” I said in disbelief. “What do you mean? How could He do anything for me when He died way back when on a cross?”
“That’s just it,” he said. “He died on the cross for you, but the wonderful thing is that He didn’t stay dead. He came back to life after three days, conquering death forever.”
“I don’t see how that has anything to do with me,” I said.
He had me turn to Romans 5, verses 8 and 9, and I read aloud: “But God commendeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.”
I still wasn’t seeing it. I couldn’t believe that I was an actual “sinner”. It sounded so horrible. I figured I wasn’t as bad as some people, and why couldn’t I get to heaven by my own good deeds? Then he explained that everyone is a sinner, no matter how good they might appear, and how sin is not just doing “bad things”, but it is the state of being separated from God.
He backed this up with more verses.
I read Romans 3:10. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.”
Several verses followed to show how man’s natural way is to not follow God.
Romans 3:23 said, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
ALL have sinned.
If this was really the word of God, and I was starting to believe it was, that “all” had to include me.
Verse after verse convinced me that I was a sinner like everyone else, having no relationship with a loving God and deserving to be separated from Him for all eternity in hell.
We talked for quite a while, and in time, I came to see that Jesus, the sinless Son of God, actually died a painful death on the cross, willingly paying the wages of sin for people who didn’t even know Him, such as me – people past, present, and future. There was so much to it. It was mind boggling, yet things were beginning to make sense.
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At this point, my story draft cuts off. I had originally typed it all out sometime in the early 1990s but can’t find a copy of it today. So, to tell the rest of it briefly, right now in January of 2025:
Through more discussion with the man on the phone, I learned that all I had to do in order to know I would be going to heaven was to accept that Jesus had paid the price for my sin by Him dying on the cross because God requires that blood be shed for the remission of sin. That didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me at the time but I simply believed it. Who am I to argue with the Creator as to what He requires when it comes to life and death? I did try to argue about how unworthy I was, pointing out that I had done a lot of bad things, but through more dialogue, I got to where I knelt to the floor beside the dining room table and with tears in my eyes I prayed. I told God that I was sorry for my sin. I thanked Him for sending His Son to die in my place so I could have eternity with Him.
The guy on the phone told me that now I was part of the family of God and that I had many brothers and sisters in Christ. That was a foreign thought to me, but I eventually learned how encouraging and comforting it is when I communicate with others who know Him.
Another thing he told me was that because I am now one of God’s children, I would be a target of the devil, who hates God. I laughed it off as I pictured the cartoon red devil with a pitchfork, but I soon learned just what a challenge it could be when people found out I had Jesus in my life. Even in my immediate sphere of friends, I received mockery, and as the years went by, I saw more and more hatred from the world at large concerning people known as “Christians”. Regardless of what anyone thinks of me, I am saved from an eternity in hell, looking forward to a much better place than this world in all its downfalls. Sure, there’s a lot of beauty here, too, but a world without the effects of sin will be infinitely better!
When I told my mom about my newfound faith in Christ, she gave me a book called “The One-Year Bible”. It went through the whole Bible chronologically with portions each day from the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs. It was written in a modern translation that made it easier for me to follow at the time, so I could get further into it. Then in October of 1990, I went to live on a barge in Prince William Sound, Alaska, so far from civilization that I had all the time in the world to focus on reading the Bible. I decided to go through the old King James English translation, with a minimum of one chapter a day, and even though a lot of it didn’t make sense to me, I felt enriched by getting it into my mind.
And one other thing the guy had told me on the phone: he said I should find a Bible-believing church. That has been a series of ups and downs. I am not super comfortable in large groups of strangers, to say the least. I did try a few organized church groups over the years, but with so many humans in them, none were perfect.
Furthermore, I eventually learned that “church” as we know it today is not even Biblical, with a hierarchy and only certain people doing all the teaching while everyone else sits passively listening, and the instructions to stand and sing, and all kinds of other traditions erroneously presumed to be “right” and useful. I have never been comfortable in that kind of setting, so, for me, reading the Bible and talking one on one with others who share my love for God has been the most enriching experience as I grow in knowledge of the One who saved me — the One who is waiting to hear from you, too, whether you already know Him or are just taking the step toward Him now.
God bless you richly for having read this. May you draw close to Him through reading His Word. May you take comfort in knowing Jesus loves you so much that He gave His life for you, and that because He is God in the flesh, even that death could not keep Him down. Because He came back to life, the Bible tells us that all who believe that will also have that same resurrection. Here are a few excerpts from the Word of God to read. Please dig into them on your own to get the full details in context and be refreshed!
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.” (John 5:24)
“For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13)
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9) (And please note this does NOT mean to go confess to a “priest”. There is no need for a human mediator between God and man like in the Old Testament before Jesus came. Jesus is that!
And there is so much more proof in God’s Word for what we need to know. If you have any questions, I am willing to try to answer them, and maybe we can find out more by discussing it.
Holy Sheepdip! 