Note: The following book by Fred Allman, "The Old Prophet", is reprinted here as a public service, and does not imply that the Hope United Methodist Church endorses the opinions expressed.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 - Early Memories
Chapter 2 - Conversion
Chapter 3 - A Transformed Life
Chapter 4 - My Search for Moral and Spiritual Excellence
Chapter 5 - Being a Witness for God
Chapter 6 - God's Command to Rebuke Sin
Chapter 7 - Expanding My Witness
Chapter 8 - A Critique of My Fellow Christians
Chapter 9 - A Critique of the Preachers
Chapter 10 - Intellectual Conflict
Chapter 11 - Called as God's Messenger
Chapter 12 - What is Ahead for Christianity
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or Faith to Faith or Hope UMC Home Page.You could say that all my life I have been of a mystical bent of mind. I can remember as a little child being dissatisfied with myself and things as they were. This has been one of the criticisms leveled at me over the years.
They say I am an impractical dreamer who is never satisfied with anything: myself, the world around me or the other people in it.
One of my earliest memories is as a little boy of four or five standing watching the sunset. Even at that tender age the nemesis was on me that was to be with me the rest of my life that feeling of loneliness, alienation, and incompleteness. As I watched the sunset and the darkness coming on the earth, I thought of my darkness and ignorance within and I began to ask the questions I have been asking ever since.
Now I know this is not a particularly unique experience. From the reading of literature and biography, I have learned that many others have had the same kind of experience, but this is not the experience of the vast majority. Mass man is pretty well satisfied with himself and with things as they are.
In reading Augustine's autobiography, I find that he preeminently exemplifies this lonely seeking spirit I'm talking about, and I have pretty much accepted his explanation for it. He says the eternal God has placed a void at the very center of our being and only God himself can fill that void. All our attempts to find fulfillment and happiness in other ways are doomed to failure. But stupid man goes on in his own little squalid life seeking happiness in his own little selfish way and inevitably he fails to find it.
The life story of Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist, demonstrates this thesis so clearly. He felt this same loneliness and alienation and this same call of God to seek for spiritual answers, but he decided early in life that there was no God and then he spent the rest of his life crying in his beer.
Many years of study and meditation have convinced me that we do not find truth by a cold, uncommitted, analytical process but rather we must set up an hypothesis and then begin to examine the objective facts to see if we can support our hypothesis. This is the technique of scientists as well as philosophers and religious seekers.
Now of course we know that it is impossible to find God if in the very beginning we arbitrarily decide He does not exist. But this is exactly what Sartre and many other materialists have done.
They set up their materialistic hypotheses and then they spend the rest of their lives amassing data to prove their theses; any evidence that does not contribute to this atheistic concept of reality they discard, and of course they always prove themselves right to their own satisfaction.
If that's as far as you want to go, scientific materialism is an adequate explanation of the physical Universe. However, if we really want to find God and the higher spiritual reality, we must transcend the physical world and enter the spiritual, and this doesn't contradict any of the physical sciences that these materialists make so much ado over. It merely says that the natural sciences are just part of the picture.
What I have been saying here in many words, Augustine expressed in a sentence: "Seek not to understand that you might believe, but believe that you might understand."
In other words, instead of setting up a materialistic hypothesis of reality and then exerting all our mental powers to prove it, we should set up a theistic hypothesis of reality and honestly keep our minds open to the possibility that God is real. If we will do this I believe we'll find the honest objective evidence to support it. Anyway, this has been my philosophy of life from the time I began to think about reality.
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There's a lot of hype on the subject of conversion and a Mississippi of words have been written about it. The fundamentalists speak of seeing lights in the sky and hearing voices, and many of them swear that Jesus himself appeared to them, but I don't believe this moonshine.
With myself it was a very simple thing. In my early twenties, I reached the point in my life where I could see the utter uselessness and emptiness of this present life. Of course this feeling of alienation and loneliness had always been with me but it now became so strong that I couldn't ignore it any longer. I would lay in bed at night so miserable I couldn't sleep.
I had gone to Sunday School as a child, but I got away from that when I reached the teens, one of the reasons being the contempt I felt for those professed Christians I was acquainted with. We had one Christian neighbor up on the hill who wouldn't think of missing a Sunday from church, but everyone in the community knew he was a womanizer. No woman caught alone with him was safe from his dirty mouth.
Another neighbor down the road who belonged to a different church passed our place every Sunday morning on his way to church. My Dad was a drinking man and many times he'd be in the yard with a bottle when the Christian neighbor came by. And of course this neighbor was always neighborly, and they would share a few drinks before the man went on to church.
So when I reached this time of spiritual crises I would not have thought of turning to this kind of hypocrite for help.
At that time I was working as a draftsman. The engineer who was my boss was a man I deeply respected because I had observed that he was a Christian, and I'll say a TRUE Christian because he consistently tried to practice what he preached. To make a long story short, he sensed my unhappiness and desolation and began to talk to me of spiritual reality. Of course he witnessed to me the only way he knew how - through his denominational teachings. But enough of the spiritual truth of the Bible shone through that I began to get hold of some true principles I could really begin to build my life upon.
Of course I took in and believed everything he told me, the denominational dogmas and myths as well as the true spiritual principles.
The myths and dogmas didn't do me too much harm but it took me many years to grow to the place where I could separate these myths and dogmas from the true spiritual principles of Christianity.
In later years (as will be related in this book), I had to separate myself from institutional ecclesiastical Christianity because of their insistence that all these myths and legends of the Bible were literally true. In my opinion, an educated, enlightened mind must grow beyond this mythological stage.
Be that as it may, I have no quarrel with the fundamentalists. If they can believe all of this without any intellectual conflict, I don't want to rock their boat. I will be forever indebted to this loving, consistent Christian who did so much for me when I needed it most.
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As I said in the last chapter, up until this time my life had been pretty much fragmented and out of focus. I had a vague desire to get my act together and accomplish something worthwhile with my life but vacillation and indecision caused me to go in several directions at the same time. One day I would resolutely set my course to believe and practice righteousness, the next I would throw it all to the wind and live for the moment.
However, when conversion came to me, all this changed. All my spiritual powers really came into focus, and the desire to serve God and righteousness became the constant ruling passion of my life. And with this came an inner joy and peace that I wouldn't have dreamed possible if I had not experienced it. There were dark clouds on the horizon and days of conflict ahead but all of this was hidden from me at the time.
Now let me describe some of the changes that occurred in my life. I had never been too much interested in intellectual pursuits. I'd always enjoyed reading but my reading tastes had been mostly for westerns and comic books. What was this strange transformation that was taking place in my life?
I found myself haunting the libraries. I have read somewhere how the German philosopher Immanuel Kant spoke of being awakened from his dogmatic slumbers. Well I was being awakened from my stupidity slumbers. An unquenchable thirst took possession of me. I wanted answers to the questions that had aroused and challenged my soul, and it was not just religion that I was interested in. Like Ben Franklin, I tried to take all knowledge for my domain, and I was brash and young enough to believe that all the mysteries of the universe would open up to my fervent seeking mind.
I would take stacks of books home from the library and spend all night reading, maybe getting a couple of hours sleep before going to work the next day.
Another thing that was a delightful surprise to me was the changes that were taking place in my character. I had always been a wishy-washy Walter Mitty type character. Anyone could push me around. But all this was now changing. Don't misunderstand - I don't mean that I was becoming aggressive and arrogant, but what was happening was that a sense of dignity and self-respect was taking possession of me. People who had known me earlier told me I wasn't the same person.
Now I know there are many enemies of truth who belittle the stories of Christian conversion and the transformations that take place in people's lives, but these things I'm talking about are just as real and tangible as any laboratory experiment. To me they are more real because my own life was the laboratory where the experiments were performed.
Somewhere in one of his books, William James is talking about the Christians and their critics, and he says these carping critics will never know whether or not the Christian's claims are valid because they aren't willing to try the methods the Christian recommends for attaining this superior state of being. To attain these results it does require an integrity and honesty of soul and a complete willingness to follow God's will wherever it may lead.
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I want to comment here on the supreme happiness and joy that I experienced as a young Christian, and I want to show why I believe that the way I achieved this happiness is the only way we can really achieve a genuine happiness and peace of mind.
And conversely, I want to point up the contrast between my way of achieving this happiness and the pseudoChristian way of achieving it.
We all know that most professed Christians regard their religion as a warm comfortable cloak that they can put on to shield themselves from the cold, hard, real world. They are very vulnerable to this real world. It is a world of uncertainty, a world of suffering and pain. As they look down the road of their future life, they see a few short years of existence and then the grave, and they don't know what is beyond the grave.
But lo and behold, they can put on this magic cloak and everything changes! Oh yes the world is still there, the uncertainty is still there, the pain and struggle are still there. Yes, the grave and death are still there. But all these things are now only for unbelievers!
The Christian now secure with his magic cloak knows that he's been saved from all this. He is now walking hand in hand with Jesus. He no longer has to struggle with any of these things. Jesus has done it all for him. In fact any effort on his part would be classed as "works" and would be demonstrating a lack of faith. The Christian says, "Praise the Lord. God has done it all for me by sending Jesus to live that perfect life for me, and then by dying on the cross for me. All I now have to do is believe and I am absolutely assured of eternal life in heaven."
My friends, do you wonder why Lenin called Christianity the opium of the people?
So this is the pseudo-Christian formula for self-fulfillment and happiness, but it's not my formula. The only thing this kind of religion will do (as Lenin said) is provide an opiate for those who are self-indulgent and lazy.
It is my opinion that we only find that supreme happiness when we are using all the powers of our being in the pursuit of excellence. I believe it was Plato who said that excellence is the full and harmonious use of all our powers of body, mind and soul. Eight hundred years before Christ the Greek poet Hesiod said, "Before excellence the immortal Gods have placed the sweat of toil; long and steep is the road that leads to her, and rough it is at first; but when you reach the height then truly it is easy, though so hard before."
In my early Christian years I had not studied all this philosophy but I instinctively knew that the way to Christian happiness was the way of struggle and effort, to seek with all my heart to achieve this beautiful moral excellence that Jesus exemplified in his life.
Some of the first areas of conflict when I became a Christian were elements of my careless life style. I was a heavy smoker and drinker. Now I know that many professed Christians claim they can use tobacco and alcohol with no inner conflict, but I could not. Call it the spirit of God, call it my own conscience, call it whatever you want - something nagged and disquieted me from within and I literally found no peace of mind until I threw my cigarettes away and cleaned the beer out of the refrigerator.
And TALK ABOUT HAPPY - I still remember the joy and spirit of exaltation that I felt when I had gained complete victory in these areas after months of struggle.
Another area of my early Christian experience in which I expended much travail of soul and a lot of effort was in prayer. With my whole being I hungered after a greater measure of this mystical experience, this oneness and fellowship with the eternal God.
The best description of what was happening inside my soul is in the book of Psalms. Psalm 42:1,2 says "As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God." As I said, this causes much travail of soul and keeps your spiritual equilibrium always a little off balance, but this state of never being satisfied with your present spiritual attainments can also be the source of the greatest happiness in the world.
I can remember starting a prayer vigil around 10:00 in the evening, after all the rest of the family had gone to bed, and then continuing on the rest of the night in meditation and prayer. I found it was so hard to stay awake and pray all night that I worked out a stratagem that would make it impossible for me to give up and go to sleep. I would spend the whole night walking the railroad track. To prevent myself from cutting my night of prayer short, I'd spend half of the night walking in one direction, and then knowing that I would have to leave for work at 7:00 the next morning I would spend the rest of the night walking the other direction to get back home in time. I can remember the agonizing weariness of the long nights but many times along about daylight I would experience the presence of God and a glory that is indescribable.
Another stratagem I used to force myself to give up my sleep and pray all night was to go deep into a forest while it was still daylight and then let darkness come on me there in the forest. I would purposely not take a light so I'd be forced to wait until daylight to come back out.
I didn't know it at the time but I was working out a very effective way for achieving this oneness and fellowship with God and the self-mastery and insight that we must have if we are ever to grow into spiritual and moral maturity.
Another area in which I started experimenting early in my Christian experience was the area of self-denial through fasting. This is not mentioned much in modern Christian literature but it is a much-taught subject in the New Testament. All the great Christians through the ages have practiced and taught it.
Of course we can understand why it's not a popular subject among the self-indulgent pseudo-Christians today, but it is a beautiful spiritual principle that we cannot ignore if we are really serious about achieving self-mastery and moral excellence.
I started experimenting with fasting in a very limited way. There would be times when I wanted a clear head to think through some problem I was facing, so I would miss a meal and devote that time to prayer and meditation. It caused me some hunger and physical discomfort but there was a definite spiritual blessing in it. So I decided to expand my fasting program.
I would on occasion eat only breakfast and fast the rest of the day. Then I started missing a whole day of meals. Finally I got to the place where I could fast for three or four days. I discovered by experience that the old Christian mystics and Saints knew what they were talking about. There is a tremendous blessing that comes from occasional systematic fasting. Not only does it help us subdue the old carnal man and help us grow in self-mastery, but it literally gives us an insight into our inner being. Mahatma Gandhi said he could not live without fasting. He called it a window through which he could view his soul.
In this chapter I have tried to share with you some of the lessons I learned early in my spiritual pilgrimage. If we want to find happiness and live a meaningful life, we must expect MUCH of ourselves. We must be willing to put forth agonizing effort and exert all our energies in this quest for spiritual and moral excellence. If we do any less than this, we are just playing a game with God and with ourselves.
Many professed Christians are playing this game. They claim they have found happiness in their self-indulgent lives of ease. They claim to be happy in their "Jesus did it all" religion, but they can never know that supreme joy that comes to the strivers and achievers.
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I have been telling you how joyful and happy my early religious experience was, but I haven't mentioned the witnessing that was an integral part of it from the beginning. How could it be any different? It was so delightful to me that I ate, slept, and lived nothing but my religion. It was only natural that I would want to share with others that which had so much meaning for me.
When I was first awakened in my early twenties I was a very shy, bashful young man. I felt impelled to witness to the great truth that I had learned, but it caused me much discomfort and consternation when I tried to speak to others.
I started out in a very simple way. I took my Bible to work, and at noon and “break" periods I'd read it. When someone came by I would strike up a conversation with them. I found that most people I talked to (including many professed Christians) were ignorant of even the simplest spiritual principles.
The next phase of my Christian witness was a natural outgrowth of these conversations. I found it wasn't as hard to talk to people about God and spiritual reality as I thought. So I set up a little more demanding project for myself. I decided I would go out door-to-door and talk to people. But it was a terrible struggle to force myself to do this. I felt impelled to do it but my whole being shrank from it. So I would fast, and pray, all day for courage and then in the evening when I faced the first door bell I would hope the people weren't home. It was an agonizing experience.
Many people cussed me and gave me a hard time. One big bruiser charged out the door and told me he was going to beat h- - - out of me. Late one evening another man came to the door with a gun pointed at me, and ran me off. I got dog bit, and had my pants torn by dogs' teeth, and had all kinds of ego-bruising experiences, but the beautiful experiences outweighed all the bad.
I visited with one family in which the father had been out of work for many months. I had them all kneel with me, and asked God to help the father find work and I told them to have faith and believe. Then I went on my way. A year or so later, the daughter stopped me on the street and told me that, encouraged by my prayer, her father had gone out again the next day looking for work, and that very day he had found a job.
Another lady I met was very troubled about an estrangement that had existed between her and her mother for years. She asked me to pray about it. In my prayer I earnestly asked God to heal that rift between them. Months later through a friend to whom she had told the story, I learned that the next day after I had prayed with her she "accidentally" met her mother in the grocery store. She told the friend that as soon as they laid eyes on one another, without a word they fell into each other's arms and that they had been the best of friends ever since.
Another lady I met during those evenings of knocking on doors told me a year later, after the Bible class at church (she had joined the church), that when I talked to her with such enthusiasm and prayed with her, she knew I had something she wanted.
All these experiences were encouraging to me, but the most beautiful experience of all was the one I had with a young troubled housewife. She was having marital problems and had made up her mind to commit suicide. She told me later that my enthusiastic upbeat visit and my talk with her about the great Eternal God of love got her back on the right track.
So you can see here why I am so enthusiastic about "going out into the highways and hedges" as Jesus commanded (Luke 14:23). There is a double need for it. Our own spiritual experience will dry up and die if we do not systematically express it to others. And if we don't witness of this beautiful truth to others, many will perish in their ignorance and apathy who might have been turned to righteousness and saved.
Some texts from the ancient Scriptures will emphasize what I am saying here: "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me. When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul." (Ezk. 3:17-19) "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation. . ." (Isa. 52:7) "Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee." (Isa. 60:1,2).
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The prophet Isaiah says we are God's witnesses (Isa. 43:10). In the last chapter I enlarged upon one part of that witness, the importance of speaking to those who do not know God and those who have lost their way. But witnessing to those who do not know God is just half of our Christian duty. The other half in essence is to rebuke sin, to call sin by its right name to believers and unbelievers alike.
All through the Bible we are commanded to rebuke sin. As an example notice Leviticus 19:17, "Rebuke anyone who sins; don't let him get away with it, or you will be equally guilty." (The Living Bible). Paul's instruction to Timothy and Titus was, "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine," Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith." (2 Tim. 4:2) (Titus 1:13)
In the eleventh chapter of II Samuel we have the story of King David's sin with Bathsheba and how he sent her husband into battle to die. In the twelfth chapter God sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke that sin in no uncertain terms, and it accomplished its purpose. It brought David to repentance.
Although this causes us much grief and brings the wrath of the unconverted down on our heads, if we are true men and women of God, we cannot escape the duty of rebuking sin. It's said that John Wesley wouldn't even permit a coachman to use profanity in his presence without rebuking him.
From the beginning of my Christian experience, God has made me a rebuker of sin. I remember when I first became a church member my Christian conscience began to compel me to rebuke individuals, and I never took the easy way that many preachers take. You know many preachers when they see one of their members in error do not have the courage to go to that individual personally. What they do is preach a sermon of rebuke from the pulpit and not only does this let the guilty individual off the hook, but it's negativism is a discouragement to the rest of the congregation who are not guilty of that particular sin.
The way the eternal God commands me to do it is to go straight to the guilty individual him or herself. I remember when I first became a church member, there was a lascivious deacon in the church who couldn't keep his hands off the women. It was a puzzle to me why everyone talked about it but no one would go speak to him. Finally realizing that no one (including the so-called mature Christians) had the courage to go talk to him, I took it upon myself. With much fear and trepidation, and humility, I pointed out to him what he was doing and the effect it was having on the church. He made the appearance of accepting my rebuke but a few weeks later he came down on me with great wrath over some insignificant thing that had happened. He hated me all the rest of the time we had any association together. It surely is the test of a person's spiritual maturity the way he reacts to criticism and rebuke.
The writer of the book of Proverbs puts it this way: "Whoso loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish." (Prov. 12:1)
Another time my Christian neighbor who was a member of my church told me a story on another member of the church who had propositioned his wife. I expressed my indignation and told him it was his duty to rebuke the man for what he had done, but he refused. So what could I do but talk to the transgressor myself. Needless to say, all I did was make another enemy.
In matters like this I have a general principle that I follow I can't rebuke all the sins in the world, but when my God specifically brings something to my attention I must act upon it or I would be a reprobate in my Christian duty.
Another time I was doing visitation in the community in preparation for a series of evangelistic meetings to be held in my church. Different women kept telling me about a certain doctor who was one of the elders of the church. These women were indicating he was a notorious womanizer. It seemed he had had affairs with many of the women of the community, and many of these women I was visiting with told me he had propositioned them in his office.
Well I was greatly troubled about it and talked to the preacher of the church. I told him he couldn't expect God's blessings on the revival services with something like this in the church. I felt he should go talk with the doctor. He said, "No, I think you should be the one to talk to him." Well, to make a long story short, when I con fronted the doctor he lied out of all of it. He said the women were dissatisfied with the bills he submitted to them and they were lying about him. I said, "Well, Doctor, it isn't for me to say whether or not you are guilty you know, and the Lord knows. But as a Christian it is my duty to talk to you about it.
Sometimes the compulsion to try to make things right is on me so strong that it seems like God is audibly commanding me. This next situation is an illustration of this.
My wife and I were in close relationship with a young married couple. Their marriage was about to break up and it was rumored that the wife was stepping out on the husband. She was always coming to us for sympathy and counsel because everyone else was down on her and was sympathizing with her young husband (let's call him "Jack"). She swore to us that she was being maligned, that all those tales were lies. I told her that she herself knew if they were true and that I wouldn't take any position on it. I said, "You know if they're true, and even if they are, God is still willing to forgive you and help you straighten up your life."
Well it went on that way for quite some time, but it became clear even to me that she was guilty. In love for her I called her and told her I wanted to have a talk with her. I still held out hope that maybe I could do something to salvage the marriage, but she wouldn't meet with me and starting avoiding me after that. I told my wife that I had done all I could and that I would lay it down and leave it alone, and that's what I planned to do.
But a few evenings later, Jack called me and asked me to take him to work - he worked the third shift. He told me she'd been gone all evening with the car, and that he had to find a baby sitter and get a ride to work. I took him to work and on the way back home it was as though the Lord spoke to me. I knew where her rumored lover lived, and the Lord said to me, "She is at his house right now. You must go and administer a rebuke to them." When this kind of an imperative is on me I would charge the gates of hell. So I drove up to his house. Sure enough her car was sitting in front of the place. I knocked on the door but there was no answer. The Lord said, "Don't let them off that easy. Go inside after them." So I opened the door and went in. Inside I called out again, but no answer. With the zeal of God on me I started looking in the rooms.
About that time, the lover came in the room with a switchblade in his hand trying to intimidate me with it. I told him the knife had absolutely no significance to me. I said, "Call her in here - I have a message from God for both of you." He called her in the room and I told them with great anger, because the anger of the Lord was on me, "The curse of God is on both of you!" and I walked out the door.
Now it would appear from what I have said thus far that I have not achieved any positive results with my rebuking of sin, but this is not so. The spiritual response that I have seen in many of my "victims" makes all the pain and heartache worthwhile. There ARE those who will take your rebukes in the right spirit. They know you are rebuking their sins because you love them and they appreciate what you are trying to do for them.
As the Psalmist says, "Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head." (Psm. 14l:5)
I remember one sweet lady that I had to talk to. She was a beautiful, outgoing Christian who was always reaching out to everyone. One of the men in the church started taking her wrongly. He started sitting with her, being overly familiar (they were both married). I knew from past experience that it wouldn't do any good to talk to him so I visited with the lady. She said, "I appreciate so much your concern. This will not happen any more.”
And it didn't.
Another time I had a friend who was playing a game with himself. He was posturing as a spiritually regenerated person and at the same time he was a heavy smoker. I told him he was living a contradiction. He couldn't really be serious about moral and spiritual excellence and be indulging in such a health-destroying habit at the same time. He told me later that my rebuke was the very thing he needed to give him the moral courage to break the habit. I am sure there are many times when people are troubled about moral contradictions in their lives, and they desperately need that push from us to help them make the right choices
But as I said, reactions to this true spiritual witness will always be mixed.
Several years ago I was preaching regularly in a little country church. I was under constant criticism from many of the members because of this spiritual witness. On one occasion, in a church board meeting, the church officers were strongly criticizing me for this type of preaching. I didn't think there was a soul in the room who understood what I had been trying to accomplish, but then the church organist spoke up. She said to the other members, "I know how you feel I used to go home and cry for hours after hearing Fred preach but I have begun to see the light. I now know that it wasn't Fred who was offending me so much but the spiritual principles that he was constantly preaching."
In closing let me say that I fervently believe that a congregation to be in spiritual health must have this kind of witness in its midst. But let me sadly say that I don't know of any church that will tolerate it.
Several years ago I was literally driven out of church fellowship because I was conscientiously trying to live these principles. And just recently I said to my wife, "Maybe I am being too hard on the churches in this. Let's try an experiment." So we picked a local church and started attending Sunday school and church. Well, I found my previous conclusions were not wrong. In just a few weeks I saw I wasn't a welcomed visitor, even though all I had done in the Sunday school class was make a few general comments illustrating the true principles of Christianity. They didn't want this kind of witness. They wanted to talk about other things.
I remember one Sunday school class period was taken up discussing the mighty exploits of the day before. It seems that some of the members had taken a ten-mile hike for which people had pledged money to the church. THEY were comparing THAT to the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul!
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Reading my diary again from the late fifties, I can see that I was progressing in my Christian experience. I was doing door-to-door Christian visitation, and I was occasionally preaching from the pulpit, but I felt dissatisfied with myself. I was longing for a greater challenge and a wider ministry.
The denomination I belonged to had what they called a "colporteur" ministry. The dictionary defines colporteur as "one who distributes Bibles and religious books." In essence this is what their colporteur ministry was. You bought your books and Bibles from the publishing house and then resold them to people in direct door- to-door canvassing.
So the next period of my life was spent as a colporteur. It was the hardest and most challenging work I had ever done but I wouldn't take a million dollars for the lessons I learned.
Let me share with you some of these invaluable lessons I learned from my colporteur ministry. For one thing I learned the importance of faith and enthusiasm. And I learned that enthusiasm is not something that just comes to you - it has to be WORKED for. Tremendous mental effort must be put forth to exorcise the negative impulses from our minds. And let me say that this is a universal principle. It's an absolute spiritual maxim that we will never accomplish anything (including our ultimate salvation) without this principle.
As I remember it, I started out pretty well. My initial dedication to the task carried me along for awhile, but then the going got rough. People cussed me and slammed doors in my face and refused to buy my books, and I began to get pretty discouraged. And the more discouraged I became, the less sales I made. I wondered if I wouldn't be better off in some less demanding line of work. After all, I was a skilled draftsman and could have a good job anywhere for the asking.
But the publishing people knowing I was in a slump sent an old "pro" to work with me. He said, "Just let me go along with you and observe for awhile." After a day or two he said, "I can see your problem - you are not demonstrating your books with enthusiasm, and you know if you don't have enthusiasm the people won't feel the desire for your wares, and won't buy."
I said, "I know you are right, but how do we get that enthusiasm?"
"That's very simple all you have to do is ACT ENTHUSIASTIC and if you act it, you will possess it. It will become an integrated part of your personality."
I consider this to be one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned, and I have consistently practiced this principle from that day to this. I prayed earnestly about it and started immediately to speak enthusiastically regardless of appearances. Many times when I knocked on a door, the lady of the house would come with a frown on her face and say, "If you are selling anything, I'm not interested." She knew I was selling because I carried a briefcase. But I would ask, smiling, if I could come in and visit awhile. I'd say, "Of course there's no obligation." And when she did let me come in, I had such enthusiasm that, likely as not, she'd buy my book.
Another beautiful lesson I learned from my colporteur days was the importance of subduing the old ego if we want to be a spiritual blessing to others. I developed a principle that I called "Spiritual Karate." I determined that I would love everyone and not let them provoke me to ill feeling and anger regardless of what they did.
As an example, many times when I knocked on a door someone would come to the door, give me a cussing, and slam the door in my face. I would walk back out to the sidewalk, take a minute to get my composure back, and then knock on the same door again. This time when he or she answered the door, his mouth would fly open in amazement. Here was this man he had just abused and cussed out, back at the door again. This time I would start my conversation "I want to apologize to you - I must have misrepresented myself. I'm here as a friend who has a real interest in you." These words or similar ones would usually make them willing to give me a hearing the second time, and more than once I was able to leave Christian literature in that home.
But let me state that it does take tremendous spiritual motivation and real love for people to be able to do this. Not only that, it's so bruising to the old ego that most professed Christians aren't capable or willing to do it.
The people who can exert this kind of rational control over themselves and subdue their old egos to this extent are a superior breed, and their antagonists in the game of life are always at a great disadvantage.
Let me illustrate. The story is told of two salesmen. One of them was an old pro, the other a beginner. The old pro took the novice out to train him in the art. After a few calls he sent the novice off on his own telling him they'd meet back at the hotel later. That evening the old pro asked the novice how he had fared. The novice said, "Terrible people insulted me all day long."
The old pro mused, "That's hard for me to understand. I've had doors slammed in my face I've had my briefcase thrown out the door I've had people run me off. But you know I have NEVER been insulted."
Another thing I think I learned during this time was that we must have the courage of our convictions. We must stand by truth whatever happens. The world is always trying to threaten and bully us into acquiescence to its ways, and it tries to make us believe that we will suffer terrible consequences if we don't give in. Usually it is bluffing, but even if it isn't we must still stand on truth and principle.
One day I stopped at a house to demonstrate my books. A big fellow came to the door and informed me, cursing, that he didn't want to be bothered. I courteously thanked him and started walking up the lane to another house. He came out into the yard and yelled that his mother lived there and that she wasn't interested either! I told him I was trying to motivate people spiritually and that everyone would have to answer for themselves. No one had the right to answer for another. With more cursing, he forbade me to go up the lane, but I kept walking, expecting to feel his heavy hand on my shoulder, but he went back in his house, still cursing. He was correct - his mother wasn't any more interested than he had been, but I had to let her speak for herself.
All in all I had some very unusual experiences during this period of my life. I find countless stories recorded in my diary of people being convinced that I was sent to them directly by God, of people telling me that my books or my personal conversations had given them a miraculous insight into truth.
One morning I was demonstrating one of my books to a prospective customer. In the front of the book was a fullcolor picture of Jesus. When I opened the book to that page, a look of astonishment came over the lady's face. When I asked her what was the matter, she said, "You won't believe this, but I saw that very picture in a dream last night. The Lord has sent you to me!"
Many skeptics will belittle such stories as these and try to find rational explanations for them, but my explanation is that the great Eternal God is real and that He does manifest Himself to those who are really seeking Him.
I will close this chapter with some quotes from Scriptures; "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart." (Jer. 29:13) The promise is valid. We will find God if we seek for Him, but we MUST take the initiative. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened." (Matt. 7:7,8)
Over the years it has indelibly impressed itself upon my mind that if we want to be unbelievers God will leave us alone in our unbelief; but if we are really open, and are really seeking for God and spiritual reality, He will reveal Himself to us. As I have already said, the unbeliever cannot truthfully say God is not real just because he isn't willing to seek for Him.
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In this chapter I want to objectively look at those, who back through my life have been professing Christians. I stress here the word "objectively" because in evaluating our fellow Christians we want to be fair. On the one hand we could become out-and-out unbelieving cynics like Friedrich Nietzsche who said the last Christian died on the cross. Or we could gloss over all the self-indulgent ways and laxness of professed Christians and call everyone "Christian" who wears the label.
Being a realist I'll take the middle course. From being an observer of the Christian scene for many years, it is my personal conviction that the great majority who claim to be Christians are that in name only. They are only playing a game.
But let me say that the most perfect exemplars of morality I have ever seen - the greatest lovers of mankind the most unselfish people I have ever known - were Christians in the truest sense.
My own love and zeal for truth and my desire to serve God and my fellow men have found a perfect echo in the hearts and lives of scores of true Christian friends who have walked with me along the way at different times in my life.
One dear lady in one of my churches had such a love and zeal for souls that she spent many hours every week knocking on doors. In spite of ill health and many other impediments she felt that she wasn't really living unless she was talking to people about their salvation. She even lost her sight, and you would think that would give anyone an excuse to stay at home. NOT HER. She didn't let that stop her. She made her husband go with her and lead her by the hand and still went out to the people.
Another man of my acquaintance was attending a church Board meeting when a letter was read from a young member who had gone into the Army. He said in the letter that he had become discouraged and his life was now so far off the principles of Christianity that he wanted the church to take his name off the membership roll. My friend told them not to act upon the request at that time.
He went home and placed a long distance call to Germany trying to get hold of the young man. When that failed, he called the Army Chaplain in that area, and said, "Look up Dave and tell him I love him." The young man later told me that it was this gesture of love that kept him in the faith. And let me add that twenty five years ago, $40.00 for a long distance phone call was quite a strain on a poor man's budget.
Another lady, one of the most consistent Christians I have ever known, was a converted hooker.
Now having said this, let me go to the other side of the coin. I have found that this kind of Christianity is the rare exception rather than the rule. I had to come to the realization early in my Christian pilgrimage that the pseudo-Christians outnumbered the real ones ten to one. And I had to realize that these false Christians would drag me down to their level and cause me to be lost with them if I'd let them.
Let me illustrate my thesis with actual experience. When I had been a church member about three months, the time came to elect new officers. The election committee wanted to encourage me so they asked me to be a deacon for the coming year. I was overjoyed to think they had that much confidence in me. I had tears in my eyes when they read my name before the church.
Well, right after the election of the new officers, one of the old members came over to me and said, "I want to fill you in on something. Do you know why they chose you to be deacon?" When I shook my head he added, "Well, they chose you after they'd asked me and I turned it down."
That was so puzzling to me why would an old member go out of his way like that to weaken and discourage a "babe" as it were? I couldn't come up with any logical answer, but it was right there that my education in realism began. It was right there that I resolved I wouldn't let the pseudo-Christians discourage me. I was going to press on toward the mark regardless of what people around me were doing.
A couple of years later, because of my zeal and enthusiasm, a small neighboring church asked me to be their elder. I went into the pulpit for the first preaching service of my tenure, and I told the people that I had taken the Eldership as a sacred duty and I would put my whole heart and soul into it. But I said, "It's not going to be easy for us because I'm going to tell you your sins, but by the same token you can tell me mine."
You see, at that time I was only twenty-five years old and awfully naive. I judged everyone by myself. With all my heart I wanted to understand my faults and shortcomings and I welcomed constructive criticism from everyone and I was sure this was true of all Christians. But I soon learned a lesson that has been reinforced over and over again in my experience: "Christians" do not want to hear about their sins. They want to hear about everyone else's but not their own.
Like the old Holy Roller sitting in the church pew with a dip of snuff in her cheek as the preacher lambasted the popular sins: the whiskey drinking, the short dresses, and short hair, the make-up, and movie theatres, etc., the old crone shouted "A-MEN" and thumped the pew. But when he said, "and now we must get to the subject of snuff dipping, THAT was too personal for her. She stood up and shouted with great indignation, "Now preacher, you have gone too far. You've quit preachin’ and gone to meddlin’!"
And so it was with most of my fellow church members in that little church. They didn't want me to preach meaningful sermons about attaining the Christian life. They wanted harangues about abstract doctrines. They could sit for hours and listen to sermons on the correct method of baptism or the virgin birth, or which day is the true Sabbath, etc., but they couldn't tolerate thirty minutes of meaningful Christian instruction. You see, I was just a layman, like them, and they didn't hesitate to express their displeasure. One cantankerous fellow especially stands out. He would interrupt me even in the middle of a sermon to express his disagreement.
And talk about a messed up bunch of people! This church took the cake. For about two years I worked my heart out trying to get things on an even keel. But as fast as I built UP, they tore DOWN. Two of the worst troublemakers, especially, I want to mention: the man who would interrupt my sermons with criticism, and a woman who was continually agitating the other members.
I might say at this point that it has been my experience that people who are of this character and who are always misjudging and criticizing others, usually have serious moral problems in their own lives, and these two were no different. The truth was (even though I didn't know it at the time), they were having an affair, and strangely a lot of their backbiting and gossiping was against each other.
The point I want to make in this chapter is that those who are serious about seeking moral and spiritual excellence must be willing to stand alone. Although as I said there are many beautiful Christians scattered throughout all the denominations, they are in a very small minority. The ones you will rub shoulders with and be interacting with all the time are the pseudo-Christians, the hypocrites (the word in Greek means "actors") and you must be on your guard lest they drag you down to their level.
Now there are those bigots in all denominations who will freely admit that these unspiritual conditions exist in all the other churches, but they swear to high heaven that their own church is lily white. Don't you believe it! I have been an observer of the religious scene long enough to know that these general conditions are universal. This is the reason I have scrupulously avoided mentioning any denomination by name, including the one I belonged to for many years. The different Christian sects are a lot like the political parties. They are all pretty much on the same level. So keep in mind that this story as it unfolds is not an indictment of any particular denomination. It is a general indictment of all of them for their amoralism, their mediocrity, and their indifference to truth.
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A caustic critic has said that the professional theologians and preachers down through history have been like a succession of blind dogs marching in procession, each one holding the tail of the one in front of him.
I wouldn't want to go that far. I believe there have been and are many great men of God in the Christian ministry but I want to say that a large percentage of those I have known were pompous humbugs and not just the ones I associated with in my own denomination but others I've known also. However, let me say here, I don't believe this critique will offend those friends of mine in the ministry who are true men of God.
Many years ago I was temporarily filling the pulpit of a small church that was "between ministers." The people were enjoying my preaching and were wanting me to continue my ministry on a part-time basis after the regular minister took up his duties, because he was to minister to two other churches besides this one and he couldn't fill the pulpit of all three every week. That was all right with me because I felt that preaching and instructing the people were sacred duties that God had laid on me.
One morning when I was preparing to go into the pulpit for the regular preaching service, the new preacher showed up. I courteously deferred to him and asked him to take the service in my place, but he refused saying he wasn't prepared. He said, "I am just visiting today. You go ahead with the service," which I did. The audience told me that he sat behind me on the rostrum and took notes all through my sermon. After the service, he said, "Where did you go to college?" I answered, "I'm just a layman. I didn't have the privilege of going to college." From his comments I could tell he was very impressed with my preaching and I rejoiced at this indication of the success of my ministry. I had only been a Christian about three years but I thought that every Christian, especially a preacher, could appreciate the spiritual appeal of the sermon that day.
Well, the preacher left and the next communication I had from him was a message he had given one of the church members to pass on to me. He declared he was going to give the regular preaching service three times a month, and that he was appointing someone else to preach the rest of the time.
From what I recorded in my diary at that time, I can see that I refused to recognize his motive for shutting me out of the pulpit. I was a naive young Christian and I refused to believe that his true motive was professional jealousy, but that's exactly what it was. His own preaching lacked that spontaneity and spiritual appeal and he didn't want me in the pulpit to upstage him.
Even after that I still wanted to believe in the integrity and honesty of preachers, but the blows that were rained on me over the next twenty years "kinda made a cynic out of me!"
On another occasion the young people's society of our church organized a series of quiz games on Friday evenings to acquaint the church with some of the facts of the Bible and some church history. Since I was a lover of books and study, I was made the captain of one team, the preacher (this was another one) was the other captain. The Friday meetings turned into a contest between the preacher and myself and he came out as an ignoramus. He was like many preachers. He had formally studied theology for four years in college and probably hadn't cracked a book after graduation, whereas books and reading were my constant meat and drink.
To make a long story short, not only did he show his great displeasure at being bested by me but in the next election of church officers he kept me out of all church offices.
Over the years I've had countless conflicts with preachers and it seems to me in all honesty that I have always been the one who exhibited wisdom and maturity. Not that I've always been right (I have not), but a little understanding of my side of it, and a little real sympathy and love would have disarmed me completely.
I can't forget the advice that one old Christian gave me during one of my disagreements with a preacher. He said, "Let me give you some advice for getting along with preachers. Just assume they're irrational and immature and let that guide your dealings with them, and you will come Out better than if you assume they are logical, rational men like yourself." In the light of thirty-five years of experience, I've had to concede in all honesty that the old man pretty well knew what he was talking about.
At the beginning of this chapter I said most of the preaches I have known were pompous humbugs. Let me tell you why I said this.
Most of them regard themselves as a specially privileged elite standing apart from, and above the people. On one occasion the preacher of my church and I were coordinating a community visitation program. Our goal was to personally visit every home in the county. Each Saturday, we'd take the church members out in cars and then send them out to knock on doors. As the local elder I always worked right along with the people, but the preacher would sit in the car and read while the rest of us made calls. When I took him to task for it he informed me that a minister of the gospel had his dignity to maintain, and that he had to keep himself apart from the people. And he also gave me to understand that the conference president would back him in that. I told him that evidently he hadn't read Matthew 20:25-28. According to the record there, Jesus said, "You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Let me say here that I have not written this chapter merely as a negative criticism of preachers. My purpose here is the same as it was in the last chapter and that is to say to you, if you are serious about growing into Christian maturity, you must be your own man. You must shed this slavish reverence for preachers. You must realize that most of them, like the rest of the pseudo-Christians around you, are self-indulgent, faulty men. You must also realize that as a group, the theologians and preachers have been the most reactionary force in history. They have always been the last ones to accept truth, and this is still true today. Look at the myths and irrational dogmas that are still being preached from pulpits throughout the land!
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From the time I became a Christian at the age of twenty-three, the seeds of this conflict were growing in my mind.
At first I accepted whole-cloth the fundamentalist Evangelical picture of reality. This mythological way of looking at reality is best described by the philosopher George Santayana. I quote him here because it is so apropos.
"There was in the beginning, so runs the Christian myth, a great celestial King, wise and good, surrounded by a court of winged musicians and messengers. He had existed from all eternity, but had always intended, when the right moment should come, to create temporal beings, imperfect copies of himself in various degrees. These, of which man was the chief, began their career in the year 4004 B.C., and they would live on an indefinite time, possibly, that chronological symmetry might not be violated, until A.D. 4004. The opening and close of this drama were marked by two magnificent tableaux. In the first, in obedience to the word of God, sun, moon, and stars, and earth with all her plants and animals, assumed their appropriate places, and nature sprang into being with all her laws. The first man was made out of clay, by a special act of God, and the first woman was fashioned from one of his ribs, extracted while he lay in a deep sleep. They were placed in an orchard where they often could see God, its owner, walking in the cool of the evening. He suffered them to range at will and eat of all the fruits he had planted save that of one tree only. But they, incited by the devil, transgressed this single prohibition, and were banished from that paradise with a curse upon their heads, the man to live by the sweat of his brow and the woman to bear children in labour. These children possessed from the moment of conception the inordinate natures which their parents had acquired. They were born to sin and to find disorder and death everywhere within and without them.
"At the same time God, lest the work of his hands should wholly perish, promised to redeem in his good season some of Adam's children and restore them to a natural life. This redemption was to come ultimately through a descendant of Eve, whose foot should bruise the head of the serpent. But it was to be prefigured by many partial and special redemptions. Thus Noah was to be saved from the deluge, Lot from Sodom, Isaac from the sacrifice, Moses from Egypt, the captive Jews from Babylon, and all faithful souls from heathen forgetfulness and idolatry.
"For a certain tribe had been set apart from the beginning to keep alive the memory of God's judgments and promises, while the rest of mankind, abandoned to its natural depravity sank deeper and deeper into crimes and vanities. The deluge that came to punish these evils did not avail to cure them...”
Santayana goes on to describe the Christian doctrine of the struggle between Christ and Satan down through history and then finally the coming of Jesus to earth to bring about man's complete and final redemption. Let's continue Santayana's description:
"For salvation came with the fullness of time, not as the carnal Jews had imagined it, in the form of an earthly restoration, but through the incarnation of the Son of God in the Virgin Mary, his death upon a cross, his descent into hell, and his resurrection at the third day according to the Scriptures."
And Santayana goes on to say that according to this Christian doctrine, all who believe in the reality and efficacy of Christ's mission and who rely on his merits shall have eternal salvation. (This excerpt from Santayana's writings I found in Charles Frankel's book, The Pleasures of Philosophy, pages 69-71.)
I have given this extensive quote from Santayana because it fairly represents what I was taught and what the main-line Evangelicals believe is the consummate picture of reality, but we can see the difficulties that these myths present to an honest seeker. As I said, at the beginning I didn't have too much trouble with this scenario but I was an omnivorous reader and it wasn't long before I was having real trouble with some elements of this story.
"What about the creation story of the Bible?" I ask leading ministers.
"How can we believe that everything started six thousand years ago?"
"What are we supposed to do with evidence that came from Carbon-14 dating and from the fossil record?"
"Well," one minister told me, "that's not for you to be concerned about. I've never concerned myself over it. In essence I guess my response to your question about the age of the earth, Neanderthal men and dinosaurs, etc., would be - I don't know and I don't care. I know that Jesus is my Savior and that's all I need to know."
It was rather like William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes monkey trial. He said, "I am much more interested in the 'Rock of Ages' than in the 'Age of Rocks,' " and he thought that slogan had answered his critics.
Of course in all fairness, the Fundamentalists do try to answer the questions posed by modern science. They tell us that Carbon-14 is not a reliable dating method and that Noah's flood is the explanation for the fossils - they were all covered over by this flood. But even if that were an adequate explanation for fossils (which it is not), how could Noah have gotten a pair of ALL the world's faunas, reptiles, birds, animals, etc., on the ark? That story has to be pure myth and fantasy.
But it wasn't only in this area that I had difficulties. In studying history and comparative religion I found that every one of the "so called" Christian doctrines that had supposedly come by special Divine inspiration anti-dated Christianity, sometimes by thousands of years. Many Gods had come to earth in human form. Many had been born of virgins who had never known man. Many of them had died and had been resurrected and gone to heaven.
At the time Christianity arose, the Roman Empire was swarming with the mystery cults, all of them built around the idea of a God coming to earth and dying and rising again. Many of them cleansed themselves of sin by slaying their God who had taken the form of an animal. After the animal's throat had been cut the blood was smeared on the penitent believer to cleanse him of his sins. If they followed all the ritual correctly they were assured of salvation.
Now let me say here as I have already said elsewhere trying to see Christianity in its true historical context, and trying to understand what is truth and what is myth in the early records is demanded of everyone who is really intellectually honest, and it will not harm our faith. In fact in my opinion, only those who passionately and honestly seek for the full truth can appreciate the true uniqueness and beauty of Jesus and Christianity. It is only those who cleanse their hearts of all bigotry and prejudice and who seek with a completely open mind, who will in the end know the true Jesus and have that perfect sense of fellowship with him.
Many years ago I was jarred by a statement in one of Bertrand Russell's books. He said he had never met an intellectually honest Christian.
At that time I had to acknowledge that he was talking to me as well as other Fundamentalists. But since then I have honestly tried to remedy that condition. Like all human beings I am probably still prejudiced to a certain extent, but I am making progress in unbiased honesty and willingness to follow truth wherever it may lead.
Awhile back a friend of mine was talking about me to a person whom he had just introduced me to. He said "I'll tell you something about old Fred. He has such a passion to be in the right that if he has any inkling that he's wrong, he'll throw everything out and start over again." I told him that was the greatest compliment that anyone could ever pay to me.
Getting back to the subject of this chapter, my conflict with the church - our paths kept diverging farther and farther apart until it really didn't make any sense for me to continue in fellowship with them. I notice in my diary under the date November 12, 1975 I wrote my letter of resignation. I quote, "I am requesting that my name be dropped from church membership. I assure you that this is not a hasty decision on my part. As you know, for many years the church and I have had an uneasy relationship. In those areas where there has not been agreement I have earnestly tried to subordinate my personal convictions to the church, but in all honesty we have come to the place where our paths have diverged so far apart that the only right thing to do is to sever our connection.
"Please do not defer action on this request in the hope that I will change my mind. After much heart-rending struggle, my mind is made up and my decision 15 irrevocable.
"I do express my love to the members of the church, and to those who are of good will toward me. May our love and fellowship continue as before.
"Sincerely yours,
Fred Allman"
As a footnote to this chapter let me say that I have no animosity toward any religious organization. I would probably still be in fellowship with the church if I could have had that open intellectual fellowship that I am seeking, but the church doesn't want that kind of openness. They have a closed dogmatic system and they feel threatened by anyone who doesn't give a slavish subservient obedience to their Holy Faith.
On the other hand, even though I personally regard many of their so-called sacred doctrines as myths - that doesn't cause me to feel condemnation and contempt for those who believe them to be true. Truth is so abstract that the only way some minds can get a handle on it is in a mythological form. After all, as I have told my fundamentalist critics, we all have myths. I have just scrapped some of the most patently silly ones they are still holding onto.
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The experiences I will relate in this chapter and the interpretation I'll put upon them will seem strange to many, and may even cause them to doubt my mental stability. I can understand that. But if you have read my other book, The Gospel According to The Old Philosopher, and if you have read this book to the present chapter, you can't help but see that I'm a very practical down-to-earth person with both feet on the ground. I'm not the type to have delusions. And besides, these experiences I'm relating here actually happened, and were written down in my diary at the time they happened.
You can disagree with my interpretation but you can't disagree with the facts. You who are reading this - if you think there is a more reasonable explanation for these phenomenal experiences, please share your wisdom with me.
Now let me get to the story. It all started nearly thirty years ago, on a warm summer day, deep in a woods in southern Indiana. I was a young, naive Christian getting ready to preach a series of Sunday evening sermons in a small-town church. According to my diary the date was Sunday, July 17, 1955.
I had gone out into the woods to pray and prepare my sermon for the evening service. I can't verbalize exactly what happened but it must have been the same kind of experience that the Bible prophets called visions. As I was praying a tremendous sense of the great beauty of truth overwhelmed me. Some of the great mystics have had similar experiences. Without any verbalizing in my mind (which is the way we usually see things), I just intuitively pierced to the heart of spiritual reality. Without any intellectualizing to myself, I just knew the Eternal Cod was real and that I was chosen as His instrument to reveal this to my fellow men. This is really not all that happened there in the woods that day, but just the highlights of it. I knew that something unusual had happened but I couldn't understand all the significance of it. It was many years before I understood.
That evening when I went into the pulpit, something was radically different. I had preached before but never had I felt like this. It seemed like the truth of God was coming out of me like hot lava. I could see a difference in the people also. They were so attentive. After the service, some of them told me, "That was the greatest sermon I ever heard!"
Weeks later one lady told me she hadn't been able to sleep at all that night.
Another person told me he had felt the strange power of it throughout the next day.
When I began to realize what had happened I begged the Lord to continue this beautiful experience for me. I said, "This is the power the prophets of the Bible possessed. Oh my God, give me this as an abiding gift and I will turn the world upside down for you."
But He didn't give me that gift.
After that one time, my sermons lapsed back into their usual mediocrity. I cried to God like a man dying in the desert of thirst, but all to no avail. For the next fourteen years I wandered in the wilderness. I could see that my own preaching was like "tinkling brass and sounding cymbals" and so was that of all the other preachers. The difference was I knew how ineffective and dead our preaching was and they didn't.
During this period I was super-critical of all of us and I got the reputation of being a very cantankerous fellow. I was like Handel they said he never could find singers who could perform his great "Messiah" to please him. Finally one of them in consternation said to him, "You will never find anyone who can please you YOU HEARD THE ANGELS SING IT."
Even though that period of my life was so full of pain and perplexity, I can now see why God did it that way. If that precious gift had been given to me in 1955, I couldn't have handled it. My character needed much, much more maturity before I could be entrusted with that kind of power.
Let's put this is the form of a parable. Back there in 1955 I was like a man who sees a beautiful piece of merchandise in a store window. He goes in to inquire about it. The shopkeeper lets him sample it and try it out, and he finds it is everything he could ever hope for. But the shopkeeper takes it away again and states, "This can be yours but the price is high."
The man asks, "I must have it - how much?"
When he is told the price, it's so expensive he nearly faints; but he is determined to have it if he has to work the rest of his life to raise the purchase price.
It's like Christ's parable in Mat. 13:45-46: "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it."
So all during this period I was begging God for this precious gift that I might touch men's lives for Him, and he was telling me that I had been called as His messenger and that he would give me the gift when the time came and when I had gained the maturity to handle it.
The irony is that when the gift began coming back to me a few years ago, I found that the professed Christians didn't appreciate this kind of spiritual reality. It was too threatening to their Christian pretensions and the games they were playing with themselves. But since I have thought it through, I can see that nothing different should have been expected. This has been the reaction of the pseudo-Christians to God's truth all through the ages.
The thesis I am developing in this chapter is that I have been called as God's messenger to mankind, and the first step in that call was the beautiful "vision" that came to me back there in 1955. I now bring the story down to 1969.
I was working as a draftsman and one day in October (Oct. 7, 1969 according to my diary), I was sitting at my drawing board in an engineering office and I was thinking about this strong compulsion I have that I am God's messenger to the modern world. Out of the blue I said, "God if this is true confirm it for me, and as I sometimes do I reached over and opened my Bible. It fell open to Malachi 3:1 and my eyes fell on the words, "Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me.
Well, of course that could have been a coincidence, but I had asked God for a confirmation of my call and that was the text that came up.
There have been other times when I have opened the Bible like that and found dramatic answers to my questions, but this was the most direct answer I have ever received in that way.
This was the confirmation of the "messenger call" but like Gideon I put out some more fleece. I told the Lord I wanted another confirmation, so I set up a further test. I would write to a friend and tell her that I had been called as God's "messenger," and if I truly were His "messenger," He would confirm it to her independently. Of course she knew nothing about this test I had proposed to God.
So I wrote her the letter. A few days later I received her answer. When she got my letter she was sure I had gone off the deep end, but she went to her bookcase to a theological book to see what the author had to say about that mysterious messenger in the third and fourth chapters of Malachi. In essence the author said that a "messenger" for God was going to come to teach his truth. So here again was the confirmation I had asked for.
I come now to the date, Oct. 16, 1975, five years after God had told me I was His messenger. I find this story in my diary under that date. I was visiting once a week with a lady and studying the Bible with her. She was having conflicts with the spiritual principles I was teaching her and had just about decided to cancel our study sessions. During one of my visits she related to me a very strange experience she had had. Here are her exact words as I recorded them: "A couple of night ago I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. So I got up, drank a glass of orange juice and went back to bed and turned off the light. The light came back on, and I turned it off again. It came back on again. By then I felt that God was in it and He had a message for me. I went to the Bible and here is the text He gave me: 'Behold I will send my messenger' (Mal. 3:1). Fred, you are God's messenger to me and I must heed what you are saying."
I know this is a strange story to my readers. Sometimes it is nearly as strange to me. There have been times when I have become discouraged and questioned the whole thing, but when I do that I always have some experience that brings me back on track.
I had such an experience in March of 1976.1 was going door-to-door with Bible literature in a different city. Walking down the street, I saw a man working in his yard. I walked over to him but before I could introduce myself he said, "You are Fred AlIman and I know you are God's messenger.
I couldn't believe my ears!
This man didn't know me, had never met me and here these words were coming out of his mouth. Trying to understand a little better why he had made this statement I started asking him questions but it was as though a little child had said something and didn't realize what it had said or why.
Another experience that I consider as a confirrnation of my special call happened in April of 1983. I was sent to a woman with a fatal malady (Lou Gehrig's disease). God told me to give her the message of healing against all the positive tests of modern medical science and against the best doctors who were absolutely sure of their diagnosis. I told her she was going to be healed. God told me to give her that message, and I believed it and spoke it to her. I believed it even though the lady, herself, called me on the phone and told me she was sure she was going to die. But it happened exactly as I foretold. She was completely healed.
So that there will be absolutely no misunderstanding of my interpretation of this incident, let me say I don't deserve any special credit for this miracle. I was merely the messenger boy - God told me to give her the message - I gave it and believed it.
There have been many other experiences through the years but I want to keep this chapter to a reasonable length and I don't see that anything would be accomplished by enlarging on my theme. If anyone is open and interested in truth, he has enough here to make an intelligent evaluation.
After reading all of this I know the question in your mind probably is, "If The Old Philosopher believes he is God's messenger, what does he consider his function and message to be?"
The answer is very clear. The purpose of the messenger is to bring truth, and only that. Of course it goes without saying that the message will never be recognized as truth by the self-indulgent ease-loving ones. This terrible, awesome truth demands too much. They will back away rather than deal with it honestly.
For the record, I want to say that I have no ulterior motives of any kind for proclaiming this truth. I don't expect any monetary rewards. I have no vested interests. I'm not representing any sect nor do I plan to start one.
Too often when God has used an individual to advance truth the people have followed that individual rather than the truth he proclaimed. Luther told his followers not to call themselves Lutherans, but Christians. What did they do - they called themselves Lutherans, and to this day many Lutherans are no farther advanced in truth than Luther himself was four hundred years ago.
In plain, simple terms, what I am saying is that I am God's messenger, called at this time to lift mankind to a higher level of truth.
You can laugh scornfully and go your careless, indifferent way. - Or you can read and evaluate my writings with an open mind.
If you refuse to investigate you may suffer eternal loss, but if you will investigate with an open mind you can't lose. If I am just a religious nut, it will become apparent. Or if I am what I say I am - that will also become clear because the Eternal God always rewards honest seekers with truth.
Actually there is another agent who will pass judgment on my claims. History itself will be the final arbiter. I am at this writing (December 12, 1983) a fifty-five year old man. In another twenty or thirty years I'll pass off the scene. If this message dies with me, history will say I was a self-deceived paranoid. But if my writings makes their way into the world's conscience in spite of the fierce opposition they will arouse, then it will have to be said that a messenger of God has spoken.
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In this last chapter, I want to think about this question:
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR CHRISTIANITY?
Mankind's search for God and truth is a long, long story, but inexorably progress is being made. We can see light at the end of the tunnel. As the book of Proverbs says, "the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." (Prov. 4:18)
If a man, lost in a deep dark cave, sees just a pinpoint of light he is going to grope in that direction, and if he continues following the light he will eventually come out into the sunlight. So it is with mankind's spiritual evolution.
From the time of its first faint, spiritual glimmerings, the human race has been moving toward God and spirituality. Fifty thousand years ago, Neanderthal man had begun to think about God and a life after death. From those first faint signs, the spiritual evolution has continued. It has been a terrible, uphill battle. There have been countless times when it looked like darkness and superstition would extinguish the little bit of progress that had been made, and would thrust man back into the animal realm from whence he came. But the flickering torch didn't go out. There have been times when the race made three steps forward and dropped two steps back, but the advance has continued.
Man's moral and spiritual progress could have extended way beyond where it is today - we already could be out of the cave in the sunlight, except for the terribly reactionary, stubborn nature of mankind. Every time an advance in truth has been accomplished, men have hardened it into a creed, built a fortress around it and remained in that spot defending it with might and main for thousands of years.
Let me illustrate. A principle of truth that is accepted today by all enlightened minds is that God is One, but for many thousands of years the dominant belief of mankind was polytheism. For thousands of years the obscuring forces of ignorance, superstition and prejudice fought against this truth. Over three thousand years ago when Moses first taught monotheism, the only ones willing to accept and believe it were a little obscure Semite tribe, and only a small minority of them.
In a time of crisis the majority wanted to go back to the gods of Egypt. Amenhotep IV of fourteenth century B.C. Egypt, believed this truth and taught it, but as soon as he died the powerful Egyptian priesthood obliterated nearly all memory of him and his one true God.
Even in this enlightened age, only a small minority of mankind is monotheistic. Will Durant in his book, Our Oriental Heritage, says the Hindu pantheon contains thirty million deities. It would take a hundred volumes just to catalogue them.
I can hear some "Christians" smugly scoffing at this, but let's not forget that most of us Christians still have three Gods in our pantheon, as the Mohammedan student told me years ago.
What is true of monotheism is true of all the great principles of reality that are slowly being established in mankind's collective conscience. Many martyrs through the long bloody history of mankind's spiritual struggle have laid down their lives to establish these truths and it is an ongoing story.
The battle between truth and error today is not between polytheists and monotheists - After thousands of years of struggle that battle has nearly been won. The battle today is over the character of God.
Most of those who believe in the One true God are still crudely anthropomorphic in their concepts of Him that is, they make Him over in their own image. Even Christianity, the religion I consider most enlightened, attributes character traits to God that only the most despicable humans would have. In fact, He is so maligned and the truth is so distorted, that to many honest seekers religion becomes a source of discouragement rather than a blessing.
Here is Cod as the superstitious fundamentalists see him.
He is an Oriental despot who demands absolute subservience and worship from His Christian slaves. They must follow to the exact letter the dogmas and rituals that He has commanded, regardless of how unreasonable they are.
And the acceptance of these myths and dogmas as literal truth overshadows everything else, including commonsense morality. You can fall short morally and still be saved, but you cannot doubt the reality of any of these myths. If you do He will cast you into eternal hell (say these people). According to their doctrine there will be murderers, liars, thieves, adulterers, etc., in heaven but not one who doubts the virgin birth, or the atonement.
In fact the worst scoundrel can get into heaven by "accepting" Jesus and putting his sin "under the blood," but the most moral person in the world who sees Jesus only as our great human example instead of a God in human form is forever lost - they say.
Christians I MUST PROTEST!
This caricature of yours is not my God. I must speak out against your distortions, your lies and misrepresentations.
My Cod doesn't care one iota about any of these things. All these myths and dogmas that you call truth have nothing to do with truth.
There may have been a time in a more superstitious age when they had some value but now they are only a barrier and a roadblock to the advancing cause of truth. We don't need your mumbo jumbo any longer. We don't need your myths about a virgin-born Cod who will stand in before another Cod for us.
If we really want to know God and have this beautiful fellowship with Him, all we have to do is come to Him.
We don't need a Sacred Priesthood to teach us the truth. We can find it for ourselves.
Now getting back to the question at the beginning of this chapter: What is ahead for Christianity? For that beautiful, original Christianity of Jesus I see a glorious future. The great Nazarene in the end is going to triumph over all forms of superstition, ignorance, and evil - not because he was a God speaking by Divine fiat, but because he was most able of all the great teachers of mankind to put in human language those great, eternal principles of truth.
I don't know how long it will take for these principles to triumph in the world but they will!
I suspect there will be many more years of struggle and many more martyrs to the cause of truth before this spiritual kingdom of God that Jesus visualized can become a reality in this old world. BUT I BELIEVE WITH ALL MY HEART THAT IT WILL COME.
Now let's ask again the question at the beginning of this chapter in a different form:
What is ahead for this sectarian denominational religion that goes by the name of CHRISTIANITY?
If history can teach us anything, that type of Christianity is doomed to extinction. Oh, it may hold on for a few centuries more, but it will be like many of the fossils in the religious world today.
Let's take Zoroastrianism as an example. At one period in history it was at the leading edge of man's spiritual evolution. It was the accepted official religion of great empires and had millions of adherents. Today it is confined to a few thousand Parsees in India and Iran.
Judaism is also a fossil in the religious world today. At one time it also was the leading exponent of spiritual reality, but it was left behind many centuries ago when it refused to listen to the prophet of Nazareth.
We are now at another one of those times in history when God is calling for a great leap forward. The forces of truth are knocking at the gates of historic Christianity, and are shouting: "IT'S TIME TO MOVE ON!"
The myths and concepts that in the past were adequate symbols of truth have now broken down completely. They no longer speak to mankind.
Jesus said that truth is like new wine in the fermenting stage. He said you cannot put it in the old bottles - if you try, the wine and bottles will both be destroyed. New wine must be put in new bottles. (See Mat. 9:17)
So if history gives us any precedents, Ecclesiastical Christianity is doomed to extinction because old institutions hoary with age have never been able to accept new truths.
Now I said they are doomed to extinction - that is probably true in the literal sense. What will probably happen is that they will tenaciously cling to their mythology and their archaic beliefs and will be left in the backwaters of history like the other fossils that litter the spiritual landscape.
The cause of truth will march on and leave them behind.
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