Personal Testimony

My story is that I came from a family with all 4 grandparents emigrating from Germany in the early 1900's.

Both parents father's were in construction in Cleveland, Ohio with my mom's dad a very successful builder.

My dad was a mason contractor like his father and after WW2 where he was a tailgunner on B-24's he came

back to work with his father in the business. Dad met mom who was a widow with a small child(my brother Gary)and married her.

I came along about 10 months later. We had a pretty idyllic life in Fairview Park a suburb of Cleveland.

We moved to Ft Lauderdale in 1962 then Titusville Fl in '64. My dad ran the shopping center my grandfather built

there then took over the bowling alley when the manager was stealing funds.

In 1970 my life changed when my dad had an affair & mom & I moved back to Ft Lauderdale to be by her family.

6 months later she tried to kill herself by an overdose of sleeping pills. She had called my dad before passing out

and he rushed down to her bedside in the hospital. A week later they got remarried and we moved back to Titusville.

I was really happy to be back at Titusville High School with all my friends I grew up with and surfing Playalinda

Beach all the time.

In 1972 after graduation from High School and a trip to Hawaii with my family I went to FIT to college in

Melbourne less than an hour away from Titusville. My major was Management Science and I earned a B.S.

degree in '76. However, on a trip to europe in '74 mom tells me that her and dad are getting divorced again.

Now I don't know how many times I've heard people say 'divorce doesn't affect the children...they're resilient, blah blah blah".

The truth is that divorce in most cases is a nuclear bomb in a childs life. I've suffered my whole life from the effects

of feeling aandoned, rejected, with anger, rage, and hatred buried deep inside myself. I have no doubt that had I not

come to Christ I could have easily become violent or engage in drug or alcohol abuse to medicate myself.

However, by the grace of God I instead went on a God search andwhile in college starting with a search for a real

encounter with God. Christian mysticism(middle age mystics), eastern mysticism including yoga, hinduism as well

as what became known as the New Age movement. George Gurdjieff, Sri Aurobindo, Elizabeth Claire Prophet,

and many others were of interest to me. I decided to follow an Indian guru in the Punjab who had a discipline called "Path of the Masters"

requiring 2 1/2 hrs a day meditation and a chaste & vegetarian lifestyle.

After graduating from college I drove out to Mt. Shasta in California for a few months before I got accepted into the US

Peace Corps for deployment to the Fiji Islands. Whether I was looking for adventure or escape I'm not sure but after 7

months in Fiji I decided to leave the job at the Bureau of Statistics and travel the South Pacific with my backpack

and surfboard. I spent 15 months in Tonga, New Zealand, Australia, Bali, the Phillipines & Guam before finally heading

home in Nov. '78 through Hawaii.

The whole time overseas though I was still a vegetarian and interested in eastern spirituality I bacame more and more disenchanted

with the idea of the whole thing. Something wasn't filling the hole in my heart that the divorce of my parents had

only intensified.

It wasn't until I got back home and got a job working at Cape Kennedy on the Space Shuttle that I began to realize

my spirituality was not fulfilling me. I was going to night school at FIT working on my Masters in Systems Mgmt that someone

had put a small sign on the side of the road. It kept haunting me like a flashlight in the dark as it said"Neither is there

Salvation in any other for there is no other Name under heaven whereby you must be saved Acts 4:12".

At first I thought...'oh geesh that's just the Bible'..as I was way too spiritually sophisticated for that. Howver,

over time more and more it began to dawn on me that perhaps there WAS something unique about Jesus Christ.

Maybe he wasn't just one of many teachers or gurus but He really did rise from the dead. Seemed to me that guru's

all talk great but in the end none have conquered death. If Christ did then He truly had something to say that demands

our attention.

About that time an old friend of mine started inviting me to church at Park Avenue Baptist Church where Peter Lord was pastor.

Peter had a huge impact on me and after going up front to receive Christ I got baptised and started a new journey of faith

in Jesus Christ that I had left during college. Whether I was now saved by faith or recommitted only God can say but to a very large degree

I no longer had a craving to search for God and endless reading but felt spiritual peace in my heart. Early on I decided to go to

Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri study center in Switzerland and spent several weeks there working and studying. In particular I was

trying to get a handle on whether Genesis was literal or not. I spent a lot of time reading Dr. Henry Morris's books on dating techniques

as well as the case for creation science vs evolutionary theory. It was a few years later that I set up Christ is Creator Ministries

to put on college debates on the subject as well as on a radio talk show I had on Christian radio and several Christian tv shows I was on.

However, it took many more years for more complete healing to take place from my parents divorce and much of it happened in the

last 6 months when my mother died. At the age of 55 having never married but having several long term relationships I came to

realize while my mother was dying of cancer just how much I had been holding it. I had to face the stark reality that

the pain of abandonment I felt at my parents divorces and mom's suicide attempt had left major effects on my psyche...including

deep seated hatred and anger that I had never shown but had left me with depression and major anxiety. As my mother was dying

and I had to deal with forgiving her and asking her to forgive me I finally came to begin to let it go. Great grief and tears came as

I saw my mther pass from this world and knew in my heart that God had done a miracle by sparing her much suffering from

lung, liver and then brain cancer at 84. She died peacefully in a coma after praying earlier that day that God would take her home to her mother

and family and God.

I always say that Christ came to set us free...not make us 'religious'. That's true... real freedom to love God and be loved by God -not out of feeling we have

to 'perform' or follow religious rites and duties but as a child in the arms of an incredibly kind and caring Father.

I've had the great fortune to have met many wonderful Christians and enjoyed their friendship-Franky & Edith Schaeffer, Dr James Kennedy, Dr.AE Wilder-Smith,

Peter Lord, Jack Taylor, and many others who have helped direct and lead my life. One thing I have learned is that God will have

His way in our lives...we just have to keep our hearts open to Him and in the end it's His character in us that creates our destiny of

entering the reality of God's presence where we can enjoy His Glory and Love without end.