I frequently write about some of the experiences I have had after becoming a Christian. Some of those moments have formed a tapestry of God’s love for me. As I said in my last post, He has been very involved in my life to the point where imagining those were all coincidences would be completely illogical. 

The point here is that not all of my experiences have been good. Especially the ones before I came to Jesus. Which, I am sure you will recognize, my ignorance of spiritual things of any kind had not warned me of an entire, perilous world out there.

I grew up with absolutely no religious teaching from my parents. They were both violently against any religion. So when I stupidly got so drunk I didn’t know my own name, I was on the brink of an NDE (a near-death experience). 

A sense of evil surrounded me, whispering to me to follow him. I couldn’t see anyone. But fear gripped me, and I began to lash out against the night air. I was screaming at the top of my lungs for the evil to go away. 

I never saw any kind of creature or person I could fight. The fear seemed to be dragging me somewhere, and my screaming went beyond hysterical. I knew something had a hold on me, and I didn’t know how to escape. 

It was at that moment when my father came out of the house, walked up to me, and knocked me out.

I woke up two or three days later. I had alcohol poisoning. I was clueless about how close to dying I had been. My brain felt like it had shrunk three sizes. And every time I tried to turn my head, it felt like my brain was encased in water, and it would wobble back and forth when I moved.

My two friends, who were probably as drunk as I was, came over after they gained freedom from their families. They were pretty much the only ones who (cautiously) believed my story. 

Still, having no spiritual background, I had no idea what had happened. I wrote it off as something from a sci-fi novel. 

There were many other times like that. Probably not that brutal. But enough that I started researching different religions and the new-age stuff that sounded cool! I even experimented with LSD to see if I could free my mind…bogus! None of that made sense to me. How does any of this stuff apply to me? All I wanted to do was live my normal life, get married, have kids, and so on. Even though I had no idea what a normal life would actually look like.

Eventually, a beautiful woman came and began trying to explain who Jesus was. But, by then, I was over my research stage and gave her the typical, “I haven’t murdered anyone. So I’m good.” But she never gave up on me. And the lights came on in 1979 on Halloween. She is my wife now, and we only have a few years until the big 50.

There are millions of people out there who are utterly clueless about anything spiritual, and they are easy prey for the darkness. They are scared to death by what is happening to them, which is magnified by the realization that they don’t know what to do.

Some people intuitively believe in God and cry out in desperation. The ones whose lives are dictated by a capricious world are truly ambushed when they come face to face with the reality of Evil personified. They have never heard of Jesus or Satan or Heaven and Hell. The sudden encounter with a deadly spiritual world is traumatizing.

A desperate life-or-death prayer doesn’t just happen in the third world. Their situations reveal their desperation. But our eyes need to be opened to the fact that anyone, rich or poor, is desperate if they don’t know Jesus. Their lives are comfortable, and they think everything is fine. Eternal life may seem like an abstract idea, but this life is only temporary. Heaven and Hell are the worlds that matter.

So your neighbors, family, and co-workers might be living the American dream. But, if they aren’t told about the desperation they are in, they will someday experience the thought, why didn’t anyone tell me about this?