Quote:
Originally Posted by WasLost
I hope I am welcome here…this is my first post. For the sake of my safety, I’m using the web alias “WasLost” for fear of retribution from the people I have been involved with for the past several years...they don’t know what has happened to me but will figure it out soon. Until last night, I was a member of a Satanic Church and have been a self-proclaimed Satanist for many years. Last night I had an incredibly vivid dream that I stood before Christ in a dark pit. He looked like a burn victim and was horribly disfigured. He was on his knees before me and bleeding. He looked up at me and asked why I had done this to him. I knelt down in front of him and asked who he was and what I had done. He replied that he was an old friend…he began to weep. I didn’t recognize him as Christ because he didn’t look like the typical depictions I’ve seen. He merely looked like a man I didn’t know. I suddenly felt a wave of energy and empathy for this man in front of me…it was then that I realized that this man was an angel or something incredibly holy. It was almost a tangible experience. I began to weep as this feeling washed over me and I held the man in my arms. Everything became very bright and I felt an overwhelming sense of safety and love…it felt as if I was holding my dad.
I awoke from this dream and thought about it for the rest of the night without sleep. I can only assume that something divine reached out to me last night in my sleep and showed me something that I have yet to even make sense of. I know now that I have been on the wrong path. I know that my soul is heavy with sin. I don’t know what to do now, and I’m feeling dazed and confused. Everything I learned to value as a Satanist now seems unimportant. My focus is no longer on myself. My sect of Satanism does not believe in Satan as a real being, only an archetype to be revered. I have identified with this archetype and have been focused on my own desires for years…dismissing all others as irrelevant to my life. I feel incredibly lost and did not know what to do or who to turn to…the anonymity of the internet would be a good place to start and I found this forum from a simple google search. I’m looking for help…advice…feedback…guidance. Anything.
Thank you for reading, and for helping if you can…
WasLost
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I wanted to add, if I may... and hey... this IS a public forum!! lol.... when Jesus spoke to you asking you why you had done this to Him.... Christians, well at least conservative Christians, believe that our sin is what Jesus actually bore on the Cross. It was literally my sins, your sins, and the sins of His people that Jesus had to bear on the Cross, for He had no sins of His own to have to atone for.... and whats more, He not only bore our sins, but more importantly, He bore the PENALTY for our sins on the Cross, for Jesus... the One who was perfect, holy, without sin... had to endure the mementary pain of seperation from God as He bore those sins...
Romans 3:21-26 (ESV) 21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."
and
Hebrews 12:1-2 (ESV) 1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God."
One way to think of it is that both you and I, if we would have been present at Calvary the day Jesus died, we might very well have been the ones who nailed Him to the Cross, for in a figurative way, our sins can be represented by the nails. Since all of us... every human other than Jesus that has ever lived, has sinned and is therefore God's enemy, our very
nature being one who is under the wrath of God... in that sense.... you can be the one who was said to have crucified Jesus.... just as it is true of me....
Ephesians 2:1-3 (ESV)
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. "
Interestingly, while you were an overt Satanist, you were not necessarily any worse off then any single person who has ever lived or will ever live as to our position, outside of Christ, before a holy and just God. For all of us, whether we were atheists, agnostics, New Agers, Hindus, Satanists, Wiccans, whatever... were all, according to the Apostle Paul, "following the prince of the the power of the air", ie Satan. Now some would strongly object to this... perhaps people like Wiccans and New Agers, as well as those who claim to not even believe that such a being as God exists like atheists or persons saying you can't even know if such a being called "God" exists, eg agnostics etc... all claim to not to be under the power of Satan etc in their false religion, but it really doesn't matter what they say or think about who they are outside of Christ. What matters is, "what does the Bible say?" And the Bible is clear, there are no objective morally neutral persons.... there are only 2 paths, either you are for Jesus or against Him, there is no middle ground.
blessings,
Ken