A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua: Part Two

 

“The first and basic point in a Christian philosophy of education, or a Christian philosophy of anything, is Biblical authority.  Just as Platonism is defined by what Plato wrote, and not by the decadent skeptical Academy of later years, so the ultimate definition of Christianit not the decadent confusion of the liberal churches, not the pronouncements of the Pope, not the inconsistent opinions of a so-called Christian community, as is so frequently asserted in ecumenical circles, but what is written in the Bible.  . . .”  Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  A Christian Philosophy of Education.  1946.  3^rd Ed.  (Trinity Foundation: Unicoi, 2000).  P. 86.

 

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 2

 

To avoid confusion, let me say upfront that I am no longer a Pentecostal, a Charismatic, or a continuationist.  I am a cessationist of the highest degree.  I totally repudiate the experiential theology of the classical Pentecostal movement, and I particularly dislike and reject the so-called third wave of the Pentecostal movement or the Charismatic movement.  My purpose in writing this article is to lay out the many reasons that I am no longer a Pentecostal.  I gave a brief testimonial of my first time going to church to show why I was early on influenced by the Pentecostal movement, as that is a major part of the Evangelical movement in the Bible belt South.  Fortunately, I would later learn that there were other options, particularly the Presbyterian churches.

Following my family history, it came to pass that my father lost his job at Friedman’s Jewelry Store as a watch and jewelry repairman because of the Timex watch and other modern innovations.  Our family had now grown to seven children.  I have three younger sisters and three younger brothers, being the eldest of the seven.  My father took new employment in central Florida working in the phosphate mines in Polk County.  Unfortunately, only a few years after moving to Florida, he was killed in a car crash south bound on U.S. 17 just north of the Hardee County line.

My mother was left as a widow with seven children, and I was only 12 and in the 6^th grade at the time.  Fortunately, I had visited a Presbyterian church in Wauchula, Florida several times with our neighbors in Wauchula, Florida a year or two before moving to my hometown of Bowling Green, Florida.  It was there that I began to read about Calvinism and double predestination in the Encyclopedia Britannica that my father had purchased in Alabama before we moved to Florida.  Say what you will, but in the days prior to the internet the Encyclopedia Britannica was full of useful information. I followed the chain index and read about infralapsarianism and supralapsarianism; I read about the Synod of Dort and the Arminian Remonstrance, all at an early age.

Unfortunately, in Bowling Green there was no Presbyterian church.  The church I had attended in Wauchula was formerly part of the Presbyterian Church in the United States or PCUS.  But there was a controversy over the ordination of women as teaching elders in the early 1970s.  The pastor and the congregation of First Presbyterian Church voted to leave the PCUS and join with the new formed Presbyterian Church in America or PCA.  I was too young at the time to understand all the issues.  However, it left an indelible mark on my memories.  I later learned that Pastor Thoms had given up his retirement and other benefits because of his commitment to biblical truth.

Moving on to the story, my mother became an alcoholic a few years after my father passed away.  She did not attend church and did not profess to be a Christian.  I was left to care for my siblings, along with my two oldest sisters.  As time went on and in high school, I became involved with smoking marijuana and experimenting with other drugs.  I was not serving the Lord during this time.

Without airing too much dirty laundry let me say that I am not proud of that period of my life.  After high school this pattern continued.  At one point I almost dropped out of high school, but my mother and a few friends encouraged me to go back and graduate, which I did.  I opted not to go to college.  Instead, one of my mother’s many boyfriends after my father’s death helped me to get a job working at a phosphate mine in Brewster, Florida. 

After only a few years, that was not working out.  I started out working hard labor on the section crew, a crew of railroad maintenance workers which maintained about 11 miles of railroad tracks between the Fort Lonesome mine and the Brewster mine.  I bid on a dragline oiler job and went from working all day shift to working a rotating shift.  I got along well with my operator at first.  He even let me learn to swing and dig with the huge machine with the 45 cubic yard bucket.

As time went on, however, we had a falling out because I was caught sleeping on the job.  I left and joined the U.S. Navy for almost two years.  At that point, things did not work out for me and I was given an honorable discharge because I was not suitable for military service.  I returned to work at the Brewster mine because I was a member of the union.  While I was gone, one of the foremen on the section crew had become a Christian.  He was a black man named Sam Johnson.  I later learned that he was illiterate.  He could not read or write.   However, he knew the Bible backwards and forwards.  He carried a Gideon’s pocket New Testament with the Psalms in the King James Version.  What a coincidence that was.  During break times he would witness to me.  He did so by handing me the Gideon’s New Testament and asking me to read a passage.  After I read it, he would then explain it to me, most likely as he had been taught by his pastor or someone in the Sunday school class at Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church in Bradley Junction, just down the road from Brewster.

This was the beginning of a renewal of my Christian faith.  After a few more hardships, I began attending First Assembly of God, Wauchula, Florida.  I gave up my drug use and turned fully to God.

Here ends Part 2 of my story about my Christian faith and my short-term mission trip to Nicaragua in 1989.  Please read my next post tomorrow.

 

You can read Part 1 of my series here:  A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 1

Part 3