Dustin

I grew up in a small town in Utah, an active member of the LDS (Mormon) church. Classic Americana would be an apt description of my boyhood. Attending weekly church meetings, riding bikes with friends after school, daily prayer and scripture study, summertime bonfires, and a knowledge that God was “watching everything you do.”

If you were to put it to film, it would be in black and white and set to the “Andy Griffith Show” theme song. On the surface, my small nuclear family (two married parents and three younger sisters with a pet cat) was doing just fine. My father held very high leadership positions in the church, my mother stayed home and played housewife, and we children were expected to be obedient and grow our faith in the church.

We were told that if we continued to follow the commandments, pay our tithing, study the scriptures, go to the temple, and repent every time we sinned, we too could someday have our very own eternal happy Mormon family. Behind closed doors however, my family was harboring a very dark secret. My father was a very mentally ill and emotionally unstable man.

He was extremely violent and physically abusive, and loved exacting twisted punishments for mundane missteps. I will not go into detail as to the exact nature of all his wrongdoings; but whatever you are imagining right now…multiply it by tenfold. Blood, threat of death, brandishing of weapons, and the general fear that not only I could be the victim, but that I may have to witness firsthand the violent demise of my mother or one of my sisters was something I just learned to live with.

To compound the problem, we could not tell a single soul outside of the family about the true nature of my father. Being the oldest child and at the time the one with by far the most emotional maturity, my mother used to confide in me, and I in her, about the issue at home. We would often weigh the pros and cons of exposing my father and running away from him.

If word had gotten out about his abusive nature, he would stand to lose everything. His high ranking in the church as well as his employment was based on the fact that he was a God-fearing man of great faith with great moral character.

We also had much to lose. Besides the loss of financial stability, we also faced the very real possibility of losing our very lives if we were to run. He often made threats that if we ever were to tell anyone or leave him, he would hunt us down and kill us; and if he couldn’t find us, he would hunt down and kill my mother’s parents and sisters in order to flush us out.

We both believed these to not be idle threats and that giving a mad man nothing to lose would not be in our best interest. My mother and I broached the subject several times as I grew up but always ultimately decided that God would inevitably reward us for staying faithful and true to the man she had married.

We got really good at covering up bruises and knife wounds and explaining to neighbors the sudden disappearance of family pets. I did my best in my early teenage years to avoid my chaotic home life with extracurricular activities, but I found the most reprieve in two things: My grandfather on my mother’s side, and the world of comic books and superheroes.

My Granddad was a man’s man and what I considered growing up to be my real father figure. He was a high school football and wrestling coach, and our shared love of those sports brought us even closer.

He unfortunately lived in California, and we were only able to see each other a few times a year. We had an annual fishing trip to Montana every summer and a weeklong bird hunting trip in the fall. There were years of my childhood where those two weeks made up for the other fifty.

More than anything, I just loved being loved by an older man who genuinely cared what I had to say and who loved teaching me. During the times when I was stuck at home, I would hide in my room and read to escape. Sometimes the Book of Mormon, but mostly comic books.

As is often the case, a young teenage angst-ridden boy like me gravitated towards the angry, righteously vengeful, anti -hero type. Why save the bad guy when he does not deserve it? Kill them all and let God sort them out.

I knew deep down inside that Jesus would not approve of this line of thought, but the Book of Mormon never really seemed to truly salve my pain. I would pray every day that God would send a superhero to my family. Sometimes I would even pray that God would give me the power and make me strong enough to stop the villain that lived upstairs.

God did eventually answer my prayers, not through a divine miracle, but instead through providence. At the end of my junior year in high school, my father accepted a job offer that would require him to move out of state. Not wanting to leave our small town in Utah, the family decision was to have him relocate and support us financially from afar.

The inversion of the masks we had to wear offered quite a temporary relief. Acting sad to neighbors and friends that our father was missing holidays and special events only brought about more laughter and joy while we were alone at home. For the first time in my life, my home was finally a place of refuge from the world.

As required by every young man of 19 years in the Mormon faith, I gladly put forth my name to serve a two-year mission for the Mormon church. I was called to Perth, Australia, and in the months leading up to my departure I studied the Book of Mormon diligently and touched a little bit on the Bible. Mormon doctrine teaches that the Bible is only partially accurate and full of mistranslations, so I only memorized the approved, out-of-context verses that supposedly prove the authenticity of the Mormon faith.

I was certain, with my natural gifts of charisma and personability, that I would be the mouthpiece for God in Australia. My experience in the mission field was extremely rewarding for a multitude of reasons. Although a deep-seated fear for most people, speaking to strangers about my faith and public speaking came very naturally to me.

Australia is a melting pot of cultures much like the United States, and I was able to meet and discuss tenets of faith with several Catholics, Jews, Christians, Muslims (both Shiite and Sunni), Buddhists, Hindus, as well as several Agnostics and Atheists. Although heated debates and “scripture duels” are discouraged as a means of conversion by Mormon authorities, inevitably, when humans passionate about their religion start discussing legitimacy, such conversations will erupt.

I was very effective in punching logic holes or pointing out fallacies in other people’s faith; ironically, though, I found myself ill-equipped at defending the doctrine of Mormonism (lack of archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon, changes to the text of the book itself over several editions, false prophecy from Mormon prophets, to name a few).

As stated before, Mormons use the Bible sparingly; however, there are two scripture verses they do rely on heavily: Galatians 5:22-23 (the fruit of the Spirit) and James 1: 5-6 (If anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God). About one year into my mission, this is exactly what I did - I went forth in prayer to ask God the answers to these questions.

I did not receive an answer, so I continued asking. I was fully convinced that the Holy Spirit would either lead me to proper rebuttal to these questions or at least comfort me in my crisis of faith, as I had heard so many other Mormons testify of before. This continued for six months while my frustration only grew.

One morning while my mission companion was in the shower, I left our apartment alone (a very major rule infraction for Mormon missionaries) to pray and demand an answer from God. While alone, I decided to use the missionary tactic that I had become so well versed in on myself. After about a half-hour conversation with myself, I asked myself the question that I had asked so many others in the last 18 months: If everything you say does not add up logically, and you are not feeling a confirmation of the Holy Spirit, what does that mean?

I came to the only logical conclusion possible in my mind: The Mormon church is not of God, and what they are teaching is false doctrine. I immediately went through the process of terminating my mission early, and although the leadership of that church did initially try to talk me out of it, they eventually purchased my plane ticket home.

I had my first cup of coffee in my life (considered a sin by Mormons) on that 20-hour plane ride home, and I never looked back. I felt the Lord confirmed my decision as I was flying into San Francisco. I looked out the window and saw the Golden Gate Bridge, and I finally felt that feeling of true joy that had been so elusive during my prayers for confirmation of the truth of the Mormon church.

I moved back in with my mother for a brief time, and after a failed romance with a former high school sweetheart, I decided I needed a fresh start to life. So I moved to Southern California to live with my grandparents. My spiritual state at the time was mostly agnostic. At the time, I still believed there was a God out there somewhere who loved me; I just did not know how to properly worship Him or what exactly He wanted from me.

I also must admit at this time that I fully embraced the sins I had previously withheld from as a Mormon. I lightly explored other religions, but none of them seemed correct either. Why I did not fully explore Christianity, I cannot tell you exactly. Partially, I had thrown the baby out with the bath water, combining Mormonism and Christianity… and for some unknown reason, I had held onto the belief that the Bible was fallible; full of mistakes and mistranslations.

One night whilst leaving a local casino, I received a phone call from my mother (who now was happily divorced and had recently left the Mormon church as well, but that is her story to tell, not mine). We talked on the phone often, usually about the gossip of my small town back home, but tonight she had a much more tragic tale to tell.

A person I had known from back home had experienced a very dark tragedy. For all four years of high school, I played football, and all throughout that time a kind old man in our local community was our athletic trainer. He taped our ankles before games, cleaned up cuts and bruises, and generally stood as the stopgap between testosterone-driven boys and their desire to prove their toughness on the field and the limitations of the human body.

He had been working out on his ranch bailing hay with his wife when the large piece of farming equipment began to experience some problems. She got out in front of the vehicle while he climbed inside to shut the machine off. As he shut the machinery down, it lunged forward a mere two feet, but the positioning of the vehicle was such that where one of the blades struck his wife, decapitating her right before his eyes.

What I found even more gut-wrenching than such a gruesome tale was my mother’s reaction to the event. She still praised God and spoke of a divine plan for all of this. How anyone could hear of such events and still praise the one who had caused it was baffling to me. I did not see unwavering faith in times of tragedy as strength. I saw weakness. A vile and disgusting denial of reality, and the perpetrator of all of this: Religion.

I sat in my car for about an hour after I had hung up the phone and laid out the plans for my new mission in life. A “born-again atheist,” I would call myself. Not one content to just sit on the sidelines and let others live their lives as they wished. One who would fight to destroy the very institutions that had been the source of all pain and suffering in the world. I would use my knowledge of various beliefs and faiths around the world that I had learned on my Mormon mission as ammunition.

I would use my understanding of their religious texts as a weapon. I would lead and teach others lost in their own faith by any means necessary. I would scream and insult if needed. I had the truth, and if others claimed THEY did, I would make them prove it to me as I gladly cut down all of their apologetic arguments.

I wouldn’t use the tired old rhetoric that other atheists before me had used; those arguments were weak and already had perfectly good refutations from the other side. I would think of new questions and demand answers. If they were going to fight for my soul, I would fight even harder for theirs. This mindset lasted for 16 years. I would gladly debate people of strong religious faith. I considered myself an “all opportunity atheist”; however, I took special pride in being able to knock down and mock lukewarm Christians.

How is it that you profess to love and cherish the Bible so dearly when I clearly know it better than you do? Sure, you may be able to pull up a cute little inspirational Proverb now and then, but I can do that with Confucius’s writings. Color me unimpressed.

It was also during this period of my life that I became an avid lover of science. Although I would never profess to be an expert in any particular field, I did personal study in the fields of microbiology, astrophysics, and radiometric dating. Even during this period of great sin that I was living in, God continued in His plan for me and, through His providence, put me right in front of someone I was obviously supposed to meet.

The economic recession of 2008 was particularly hard for those working in the service industry, and finding a job anywhere in Southern California was nearly impossible. My desperation for employment became so great that I even reached out to a long-time friend in Utah for help. She at the time was working as a bartender at Red Lobster, and sure enough, they were hiring servers.

The job would obviously require a move back to Utah (something I was not happy about), but I needed employment badly; plus, I would be closer to my mother again. Her health had undergone a sudden downturn; we didn’t know it at the time, but the eventual diagnosis would be terminal. I thank God every day that I was given the opportunity to be close to her during the last few years of her life.

It was while working at Red Lobster that I met Erin. She is still to this day one of my closest and best friends. Through talking during the downtime of a slow Tuesday morning shift and our constant text message exchanges, we learned that we had a lot in common. We both had very similar senses of humor, watched the same TV shows, and loved stage musical plays.

What made our friendship even more bonding, though, was how we could find the similarities in our shared life experiences in things that on the surface seemed very different. For example, I grew up wrestling, and she grew up professionally dancing ballet in New York. On the surface, these two sports seem like opposites; however, if you look deeply into the training methods, footwork, and food deprivation, they are actually very similar.

My boyhood love of comic books and superheroes continued to grow, and it was also during this time that there was a great revival for the love of the genre. A new superhero movie was smashing box office records every other week, it seemed, and my friends and I would attend every premiere.

In 2013, when Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” hit theaters, I initially wasn’t very excited. The character of Superman was one that had never really piqued my interest; he seemed hokey and boring to me. By the time that the credits rolled, I completely changed my mind. I had found my new favorite superhero.

I immediately went home and consumed every book, movie, and cartoon ever featuring the character. The story of how a supremely powerful father sent his only son to Earth to be raised by an earthly mother, who would have extreme power himself but not use that power to tyrannically rule, but instead be the perfect example of hope and justice for humanity, one who would die but eventually be resurrected, was one that I simply could not get enough of.

Several more years passed, and I continued to engage in several sins, but one in particular had very dire consequences. In April of 2016, nine F.B.I. agents stormed my house and arrested me. I would eventually be sentenced to serve three and a half years in a federal prison; however, the sixteen months leading up to it were very torturous as well. I was anxiety-ridden and very depressed.

One of my biggest fears was that my grandfather would pass away while I was locked up. Although not suffering from any specific health problems, he did have the natural ailments of a man in his eighties, and I knew that he was not long for this world. My best friend Erin promised to stand by my side the entire time, write letters to me every week, and send me as many Superman comics as I could read.

God still has a plan even for the mightiest of sinners, as was proven on the day I surrendered myself to begin my prison sentence; what I thought would be the worst day of my life turned out to be the day that I met the exact person that I was supposed to. The fellow prisoner staying in the bunk directly across from mine was a man named Chris, and we became instant best friends.

We had very similar personalities and interests. He was an extremely intelligent and sharp individual, and I fully expected him to share in my atheist worldview. I was shocked when he told me that he was a very devout Christian. Chris worked in the prison library, and knowing that I was a fellow avid reader, he was able to procure a job for me in the prison library with him. The job would require us to be locked in a room full of books and knowledge eight hours a day with only each other, and I was excited at the prospect.

A man of immense knowledge of not only the Bible but other world facts that supported his belief, I felt like I had finally found a worthy opponent when it came to my skills as a debater. We agreed to enter a gentleman’s debate on the subject of atheism vs. Christianity, set various ground rules, and then let the duel begin.

The months in prison began to fly by as our back-and-forth continued ad nauseam. Although at times our conversations would get heated, we would always return to laughing and joking quickly after. We would often participate in book exchanges, asking the other to truly take in the information presented.

On one of these occasions, I presented him with the book “Why Evolution is True,” and he presented me with Lee Strobel’s “Case for Christ”. I read that book four times over the course of the next three days and was completely dumbfounded. With intense scrutiny, I scoured the pages for holes in the logic, and I couldn’t find one fallacy. I was scared to death to go back and face my intellectual sparing opponent without any ammunition.

When that morning came, Chris did something very unusual. Instead of providing scientific evidence refuting my book, he simply read Genesis chapter 1 to me, handed me “Why Evolution is True” back to me and told me to read it again, with the same scrutiny that I had just read “Case for Christ”. I did what I was asked, and as I studied, something amazing happened.

The idol of the theory of evolution that I had held onto and worshipped for so many years crumbled into dust in my hands. Even more frightening was the realization that I had for myself. I was practicing faith in atheism. Faith was exactly what I had fought against for so many years. I wish I could say that it was in this moment that I finally turned to the truth, but I didn’t.

For the next few years, I still proudly wore the religion of atheism on my chest while a tiny seed of doubt lingered in the back of my brain. With three weeks left of my prison sentence, I was greatly looking forward to a happy release and a reunion with my grandparents. However, tragedy took another turn in my life.

On Christmas Eve of 2020, my grandfather was rushed to the hospital after a bad fall and passed away a few days later. I was devastated and felt like I had stumbled right at the finish line. I always knew that my grandfather would pass away someday, but to be so close to finally seeing him again, only to have it ripped away, was an extra twist of the knife in the wound.

When I did return home, what was supposed to be a happy homecoming was instead a household of depression. My grandmother was mourning the loss of her husband of 61 years. I was adjusting to life on the outside, dearly missing my father figure, and on the inside, confused spiritually.

I began to drink heavily to deal with the stress during the day and numb the pain at night. Without atheism, I didn’t have anything to lean on during times of stress. One morning, while it was still dark, I was sitting outside on my porch smoking a cigarette. My recent alcohol infused bender had rendered things such as day and night meaningless, and I lacked any real direction in life.

Depressed, lonely, and needing guidance, I internally screamed, “Who will be my father now?” into the twilight. It was at that exact moment that I saw the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen. I must apologize for my ineptitude as a writer here. I am simply unable to describe in words the beauty of this particular sunrise. People who have seen such a sunrise will know instantly the spectacle I speak of; however, to those of you who have never seen such a feat, realize that the term “as beautiful as the rising sun” exists for a reason.

Its beauty is something that cannot be put into words, only have lesser-beautiful things compared to it. As I gazed up at that insignificant yellow dwarf class star, I realized that although I did know what the sun was made of, I had never thought about what the sun was.

Hydrogen atoms colliding and forming Helium atoms wasn’t just nuclear fusion in the sky giving us the energy needed to survive. The sun was the source of all life, and more importantly, my life. I was able to live and experience any experience in this existence I wanted all because the sun was placed exactly where it is placed now.

As I felt the sun’s warm glow on my face that morning, I made the same fatal mistake that so many cultures and civilizations before me had made. I looked right past the Creator and started worshiping the creation. Pagan sun worship became a daily practice in my life, and for a short while, my life drastically improved. In most pagan circles, moon worship is reserved for women, and sun worship is mainly practiced by men.

Aligning certain daily tasks with the position of the sun in the sky, casting spells when needed, and the use of worship stones and energy transfer crystals are a great way to garner short-term results, and that it did. The enemy is certainly very clever, by definition, “diabolical.” I must admit the genius in putting something like magic in front of a struggling alcoholic. The effects and cycles parallel quite well.

At first the effects are energizing and invigorating, and power is often described as “intoxicating”. The returns are diminishing, however, and spiritual recovery requires longer intervals. I would often joke to myself that I was “spiritually hungover.” I would frequent soothsayers and psychics often, and many times they would tell me that the energy of Ares, the Greek god of war, was strong on me and that I should seek him out.

My childhood had been a battlefield; I had escaped the pain during my adolescence with contact sports, and my adulthood pleasure was verbal sparring and debate. Even my love of superheroes was rooted in the very battle of good vs. evil. It would only make sense that the god of war and I would share a bond.

I should not have been surprised when Ares answered my call dramatically. Late one night, I was tracking Ra, the Egyptian sun god’s nightly journey through the underworld, when I felt what I can only describe now as a vacuum seal around the air around me and a screen wipe over my eyes.

Although I knew that what I saw before me didn’t exist on this plane of existence, it certainly didn’t mean that what I beheld wasn’t real. The landscape around me warbled into a desolate volcanic scene, in retrospect very similar to the surface of Mars. The brick wall outlining my backyard melted into liquid magma into the shape of a V, as what appeared to be a dark knight, decorated just as heavily as he was armored, methodically walked towards me, dragging his spear, leaving a trail in the sand behind him.

For the next perceived fifteen minutes, Ares, the Greek god of war, told me many lies about the nature of my being. He explained the nature of our lives as one of his lieutenants, the nature of his relationship with Aphrodite, why we must wear such “dark helmets” at times, etc. The biggest lie I fell for that night was one, however, that potentially could have had very eternal consequences had I not accepted my Savior eventually.

He told me that this particular life I was living was a gift from him. A life filled with indulgence and pleasure and, more importantly, free of the perceived guilt such acts may cause. I was told to find a daughter of Aphrodite and fully accept the love that she would give me, and to continue to promote war in my life because “conflict breeds resolution.”

With the current knowledge I now have of demonic activity and false visions, my very spine shudders when I think about the true nature of the entity that I entertained in my backyard that night. I did exactly as that demon had instructed for the next several months and had the obvious results of living such a life.

I maintained a loose moral code; however, I could not get enough of every legal sin I could find. The pagan lifestyle had not freed me as promised. I found myself in the same situation I was in before I had started, with an added, even more dangerous caveat. Not only was I lonely, depressed, and drunk on my couch; my spiritual self was in just as much pain as my physical body.

Chaos theory is often the secular reasoning for amazing coincidences happening in this world. Those of us who know of a divine plan can’t help but chuckle when we recognize such events as God’s fingerprints all over his creation. Our Father in Heaven will use any tool needed to find one lost sheep, including technology.

One more October evening may have been simply passing by for me; but at the same time, a Father was desperately trying to catch the attention of His son. I was wasting time the same way so many of my generation do, by scrolling through and going down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos, when one in particular caught my eye.

A redhead sharing her Christian testimony is something that I must admit would not have been of interest to me a few years prior. Recent personal events had obviously softened my heart.

I’d be lying if I said that the “spirit of Ares” didn’t flare up in me a bit, and the idea of seeing how valid her experience was was intriguing. I’m sure it’s possible that, at the time of production, Vanessa and her co-host Greg thought that this episode was being attacked by Satan. Their guest, who they had planned on interviewing, canceled at the last minute, leaving both of them without material.

To fill the episode’s time, Vanessa simply shared her own testimony and how she came to know that He was her personal savior. Her just over an hour-long story hardly felt like it; however, I do not know if I would have continued watching had the circumstances been different.

Good lies are hardly told on the spot, and oftentimes the first version of the story is the most correct. Vanessa’s story had touched me so much that by the end I was certain she had experienced something spiritual. I did something very out of character for me; I left a comment, leaving my first and last name. I typically value my online privacy and don’t participate on any social media platform, but in this instance, I just felt a need to contact her.

Several days passed, to the point where the video had become an afterthought to me, when I suddenly received a flurry of text messages from my good friend Erin back in Utah. Excited ramblings about that being “the” Vanessa from New York followed by screenshots of a Facebook page made zero sense to me, so I decided to call to understand what the big deal was.

Erin had to explain the entire situation several times verbally; however, this time not because of my lack of knowledge in the field of social media, but instead because what she was saying simply seemed mathematically impossible. Erin had left the world of ballet several years prior and had cut ties with most parties still involved, except for her former dance partner and best friend, Vanessa.

The very same Vanessa that had shared her Christian testimony online. When Vanessa first got word from Greg that someone had commented on the beauty of her story, she initially didn’t react, but eventually cracked after some time and posted a screenshot of my comments.

Since Erin and she were Facebook friends, and I had listed both my first and last name instead of a username, Erin was able to connect the dots and realize that her two best friends had met online. Phone numbers were exchanged, and I was finally able to speak to the redhead with the intriguing tale. Vanessa and I quickly became phone friends, both of us shocked at how quickly the hours melted away into conversation.

Although she would eventually be the one to watch the final domino fall in my eventual surrender to Jesus, she is so much more to me than a character on my journey to salvation. There is no doubt in my mind that our friendship is eternal, especially knowing how chance our encounter was.

I steal her analogy of our friendship often, as it is so apt: “like those two brother and sister orphans you see in movies. The ones who grew up in the foster system only having each other so they just grew to have an inseparable bond.” Vanessa and I both happened to be in similar living situations as well, both of us living with and caring for our respective elderly grandmothers. Although aiding someone at the end of their life comes with very special blessings, the stress can take its toll as well, and we were able to comfort each other during that time.

When Vanessa’s grandmother passed away on Christmas of 2021, she obviously mourned greatly, and I did the best I could to comfort her from afar. The months continued to go on, and the friendship Vanessa and I had only continued to grow. Her life was in a bit of purgatory at the time, and she didn’t have definite plans for the future. I started joking that she should fly out to California, take a little vacation, and help me take care of my grandmother.

What started off as a joke eventually caught steam, and in August of 2022 Vanessa flew halfway across the country to finally meet her pagan friend face to face. I was still struggling with the throes of alcoholism at the time and severely depressed. Trying to think back to the last time I felt happiness, I thought back to my days in the prison library with my old friend Chris.

Released prisoners probably hardly ever think back to their days of incarceration with fondness, for obvious reasons, but I simply missed mentally jousting with someone. A few days before her flight, I made the same proposal for a gentleman’s debate to her that I had made with Chris years earlier, with the obvious exception of myself speaking on behalf of pagans vs. Christianity. She, being the devout Christian woman she is, hastily agreed.

I told her to get ready, because I was certainly going to challenge her on the Bible. A two-week trip quickly turned into a few months’ stay and an eventual permanent residency, as her kind countenance and her sincere, sweet, service-oriented heart filled my home with a warm spirit.

I now know that it was simply the Holy Ghost shining through her, but at the time, all I knew was that I wanted what she had. Vanessa wasn’t quite the Biblical scholar that Chris had been, but that certainly didn’t mean the woman couldn’t defend her faith. Her talent was very impressive; she would often say that even if she didn’t know the answer or if she could not adequately explain a subject, she certainly knew of someone who could.

She had spent much of her early years as a Christian watching apologists, debates, sermons, and testimonies online, and had a vast index of appropriate speakers. The heat of the Coachella Valley in late summer is something residents of the area just learn to avoid by staying indoors, and for the first few months, that is what Vanessa and I did.

Being a gentleman, I let her take the floor first in our friendly debate, and she presented her case for Christianity. My overall plan was to let her show her fair share of argument, then respond with pagan answers. We never got that far. Although we did watch several very moving testimonies and sermons, one really shook me.

It is my belief that there is not a human being on Earth who would not benefit from watching Bill Wiese’s “23 Minutes in Hell.” Regardless of what you believe now, when eternity is at stake, it would be worth it to listen to what others have to say about it.

The man tells a very detailed vision he had of the torment he felt while experiencing 23 minutes of what is forever for so many souls. The harrowing tale even kept me from falling asleep that night, and after Vanessa had retired to her room for the evening, I did something that I had not done since my Mormon mission. I went into the bathroom, got down on my knees, and prayed to my Heavenly Father.

I was not saved at that time, but I did feel a feeling of peace. I knew that hell was very real, but I was comforted. I couldn’t tell you why, but I just knew my soul wasn’t destined for there. The overall message of Mr. Wiese’s story did stick with me, and I couldn’t help but think of my good friend Erin back in Utah and the eventual destiny of her soul. Over the course of our 15 year friendship, the subject of spirituality had come up frequently, but she had never shown any passion for seeking answers beyond the grave.

Erin had stood by me during my prison sentence and had been my lifeline to the real world for three and a half years, and I know that, had the roles been reversed, I would have done the same for her. The idea of her being in an even worse prison for eternity and me being unable to provide relief twisted my heart.

Vanessa continued to share several more online testimonies and sermons with me, but the key to my conversion was our study of the Bible. The human mind has a funny way of making the simplest thoughts abstract. Although I could rattle off the author of several Bible books, I had never stopped to ponder just how powerful such a fact is.

Every single word written in the Bible was written down by a real person. Accuracy is very tightly written as well. Geographical regions are confirmed by archeology constantly, and extra-biblical sources cite political figures with insane precision. Only the most desperate of secular thinkers would think to attack the accuracy of Jewish record keeping.

For the first time in my life, however, I was attributing credibility to these authors. If someone were to make five statements and the first four were proven correct, I would certainly be inclined to believe their fifth statement. If I were to find out that said person was tortured and subjected to a violent death because he would not recant his fifth statement, I suddenly really want to hear what this man had to say.

If I found out this pattern had been repeating for 1500 years over three continents, I would demand a full-blown investigation. As convincing as this argument was, it was still the cold logic of atheism. The truth obviously needed to make sense in my mind, but I needed a spiritual witness as well. The logic was a necessary step; without it, I was subject to the fleeting feelings of Mormonism or paganism. I needed both to know it was from my Lord.

Luckily for all of us, a genuine inquiry of “God…are you there?” is one of His favorite questions to answer. On October 24, 2022, with the “23 Minutes in Hell” sermon still on my mind as well as the fate of Erin’s soul, I brought up the subject again with Vanessa. To be concerned with someone else’s salvation before your own is even secure may be an odd way to approach the subject, but I have always done things my own way.

Wanting to share the water before I had even partaken myself, I said to Vanessa, referring to Erin, “I’m not sure she is really saved…” when God chose that moment to take care of a very important step I had to take before I could take testimony of Him to the world. He whispered in my mind, “…but you are.”

I was saved. Tar peeled from my heart while cooling salve filled tired old fissures. I felt the Holy Ghost, God Himself, as created, acknowledged, and loved by the Creator for the first time. If the term “being saved” makes you roll your eyes like it once did mine, I greatly implore you to continue seeking.

You will find eternal joy so great you will want nothing else. Every problem in my life didn’t go away the second I was saved; in fact, we are warned as Christians that the path ahead of us is rugged but worth it. I still have so much to learn, and I stumble from time to time. Much like if someone were to be born again and had to relearn how to live life a new way as a child again.

I do know that ever since He flipped that railroad switch in my life, I can take solace knowing that I am at least on the path my King has set out for me. He did not save me so that I would not testify to His greatness and His everlasting mercy. I know my citizenship (Phil 3:20), and I know my charge (2 Tim 4:1-5).

Seek Him, and you will find Him (Matt 7:7).