My Journey Out of Mental Egypt
By John Samuel Jeremiah

I was born on June 8th, 1981 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As long as I can remember I always wanted to know what was true. I wanted to know what made things tick. When I would get toys for Christmas I would eventually tear the toys apart because I wanted to know how the radio made music or what made the remote-controlled car run. I can remember wanting to participate in talks with people that were older than myself. "Stay out of grown folks' business," my mother would remind me. At school my favorite subjects were math and science. I enjoyed these subjects because they explained to me how many things worked in the world. Eventually, I moved in with my father to a small town in Florida called Avon Park. Belief in a god was not something that was instilled in me as a child.

By the time I reached middle school, I had a pretty good understanding of evolution and having little religious instruction at home or school I tended to believe it. And by the time I graduated from high school and went to college, I was an atheist. I sincerely thought that people who believed in a god were out of touch with reality. "Why would people embrace the concept of a god with no evidence," I would ask myself. All religions were simply man's futile attempts to convince himself if he lived his life a certain way, he would go to a mythological utopia or some fairytale nirvana. My thoughts were very secular and humanistic. I believed people only lived to eventually die, and after death: no heaven, no hell, and no hope. What you see is what you get.

I was very opinionated about things such as law, politics, and religion. I had a reputation for being an excellent debater. I would often joke that I could make a person look at the blue sky and make them swear it was yellow. Holding conversations with people much older and more educated than myself came easily. I would sometimes run into people who claimed to believe in god. "Why do you believe in god?" I would inquire. "Well, the Bible says..." I would interject, "Why do you believe the Bible?" Then I would go through my process of systematically tearing down their positions. My whole mentality was separating what I saw as fact from fiction and truth from lies. I prided myself in leaving people tongue-tied and questioning why they believed what they believed. I could be vindictive at times, showing people how ignorant they were of the very positions they were trying to defend. I detested the hypocrisy other people would demonstrate when making assertions about things they knew little or nothing about. That said, when retrospectively looking at this point in my life, I failed to acknowledge my own hypocrisy. Outwardly, I exhibited qualities of self-assurance and self-confidence, but inwardly I harbored insecurities and occasionally contemplated suicide.

Upon completion of my associate degree at the local community college, I moved to Tampa. Around this time I began to ask myself deeper questions concerning my beliefs. I asked myself, "Why am I an atheist?" And of course I thought to myself there is no evidence to support the existence of a god. Then this crucial thought entered my mind. Do I know of any evidence that disproves the existence of a god? I knew of absolutely no evidence to refute god's existence. Then it hit me! How could I identify myself as an atheist if I knew of no evidence to disprove the existence of a god? I could not! If I was not an atheist then what was I? This question tormented me for months. I finally came to the conclusion that I was an agnostic. I was a person who did not know whether or not a god existed. And this is where my journey began. I wasn't satisfied with not knowing the answer to the questions of all questions. I had to know whether or not there was a god. If a god indeed existed, in what way should I relate to that god?

Being a person born, raised and living in America I naturally started researching Christianity. I primarily turned towards television to get my understanding. I saw preachers who claimed to "get in the spirit." Then all of a sudden they would begin uttering and babbling incoherent gibberish. Sometimes people would claim to have the "Holy Ghost" and would begin gyrating their bodies and screaming. Other Christian programs were less amusing and more sobering. I would watch televised sermons where the preacher would speak about how the unsaved people would burn in hell forever and ever, where Satan would have his way with them. I would read about killing and tortures that occurred during the Christian inquisitions and the Christian crusades. I used these superficial observations to formulate my view of Christianity. As hard as it is to admit, I concluded that Christianity was a hypocritical and oppressive religion based largely on fear and control. I believed preachers used the Bible to extort money from their ignorant congregations. I said to myself, "I want to know the truth, not some archaic Bible." Looking back on my life that was the worst mistake I ever made. Satan had tricked me into cutting off the hand that was feeding me.

Being a young African American male, my religious odyssey eventually gravitated towards "black" religions. The Nation of Islam was my first consideration. I was attracted to this movement primarily because of its ethnocentric approach to explaining the nature of God. At the time, my secular education caused me to strongly believe in evolution, and most evolutionists believed that life originated in Africa. I saw the Black Muslim movement as a practical means of merging my deeply held secular views with my racial predispositions. I studied the life of Malcolm X, and became motivated by the whole theme of getting back to my "roots." I thought to myself, perhaps the truth rested under layers of force-fed Eurocentric and Judeo-Christian beliefs, induced by slavery. This line of thinking caused me to slowly see African Americans not as Americans of African descent, but rather as Africans born in an oppressive America, who were being deceived into embracing a white man's religious book and culture. However, being a sincere seeker of truth and knowledge, I began to question my own objectivity. I came to the realization that much of the underlying mentality of Afrocentric religions ironically paralleled with Eurocentric sects such as the Aryan Nation and even the Ku Klux Klan. Each respective group would twist their holy book to perpetuate their own views. While the Nation of Islam, New Black Panthers, and other sects of the like seemed culturally tailored towards my carnal nature, my desire to find and know truth superseded my own ethnic biases, I held at the time. Arbitrarily assuming God would have the same skin color as the man in the mirror was really making me believe what I wanted to believe, instead of me honestly trying to seek truth. Truth, I determined, was neither black nor white.

One idea that came to me was perhaps all religions were right. In other words, maybe all religions were simply different ways of worshiping the same God. Instead of embracing one faith, I noticed commonality between most religions and I attempted to consolidate the basic tenets into one. I studied Judaism and the Ten Commands of the Torah. I studied Islam and the Five Pillars of the Qur'an. I studied Buddhism and the Five Precepts of the Pitaka and Dhammapada. However, the more I tried to harmonize these widely varying faiths, the more confused I became. As attractive as the whole concept of not having to adhere to any particular organized religion was, I began to believe that if there was a god, surely he would have establish some sort of clear way of having me relate to him. I had questions that needed to be put to rest and concocting my own conglomeration of existing religions was simply not the answer.

One day, while randomly channel surfing; I saw a piece of some religious seminar called Amazing Facts Millennium of Prophecy. At the time I did not have much trust in the Bible. I was under the false impression that it contained contradictions or that the Bibles of today probably varied widely from the original text. But the speaker, Doug Batchelor, dispelled a lot of my misconceptions. His approach to the Bible really caught my attention. The Bible was presented with uncomplicated step by step reasoning. He would post a question on the screen then show the germane scriptures and leave it up to the individual to determine what the proper answer was. When the speaker explained prophecy given to King Nebuchadnezzar, through vision, it was shown, by the Bible, how the times, dates, and sequence of events matched perfectly with historical accounts. The Bible's prophetic accuracy, in foretelling historical events, made me consider that my previous assessments were likely misconstrued.

I started tuning in weekly. In one of the seminar sessions, the speaker proved from the Bible what the true day of worship was. I became convinced the seventh day Sabbath was the day of worship for people who choose to follow the teachings of the Bible and was still applicable to New Testament Christians. This really astonished me. One of the major hindrances to embracing the Bible, as the word of God, was that I believed absolute truths could not be gained from the Bible. For example, one plus one of the same item equals two of that same item. This is an absolute unchanging truth, with universal application. It's not subject to one's own interpretation or background. If another person sincerely believes otherwise then that person is sincerely wrong. I knew of many intelligent people who were well versed in Bible study. The fact that these people who would read the same Bible would come up with widely varying opinions on doctrines further perpetuated my fallacy that the Bible could not be trusted. I thought to myself, "If highly educated theologians can not agree on what the Bible says, then why should I waste my time trying to figure it out?" But as time progressed, and as I studied the Bible for myself, I began to see agreement where I once perceived contradictions. As Ellen White, a writer I have a great deal of regard for states, "... as several [Bible] writers present a subject under varied aspects and relations, there may appear, to the superficial, careless, or prejudiced reader, to be discrepancy or contradiction, where the thoughtful, reverent student, with clearer insight, discerns the underlying harmony." This was the major turning point in my life. I began not only to conceptually understand the Bible but the manner in which it flawlessly fitted together compelled me to believe it.

I eventually decided to order the whole Bible seminar, on video. On one of the tapes, Doug Batchelor briefly mentioned he was a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. I thought to myself, "What is an Adventist?" I had never recalled hearing that term before. I asked a few people if they had ever heard of Seventh-day Adventist. One coworker told me his sister was an Adventist and she was very strict about living according to the Bible. Another person told me that Adventists are closed minded people. If you disagree with them on the Bible, you are automatically wrong. I decided to hop on the net and do some research. And there they were, dozens of websites depicting Seventh-day Adventist as a cultish religion. "Adventists believe people are saved by works," one website proclaimed. "Adventists teach that we are still under the Jewish law," another stated. Wanting to maintain my own objective quest for truth (as a new Bible believer), I exhaustively tried to see if there was any validity to the opposing views of the Adventist church or the assertions made in the seminar. However, the more I tried to find evidence for Sunday Sabbath, endless hellfire, purgatory, or exemption from keeping the Ten Commandments the more I became convinced that the teachings of the Adventist church were in line with the Bible's teachings. I also became convinced that the Seventh-day Adventist church was the last day remnant church, of the Bible. I eventually went to www.adventist.org to check for local churches in Tampa. I found many listings in the Tampa area. On a hunch, I tried to see if there were any Adventist churches back in Avon Park. I saw a listing for the Ridge Area Seventh Day Adventist church. The ironic thing is that the Ridge was just a few blocks from the home where I had grown up. For much of my childhood the truth was right under my nose. I thought to myself, "I can't believe it; an Adventist church is with in walking distance of the house I grew up in." As an adolescent, I had been so blinded by my own secular beliefs that I hadn't even taken time to get to know the name of the church or what the members believed in. Coincidently, I had already been driving from Tampa to Avon Park every weekend, to visit my father. So, upon completion of the Amazing Facts seminar, I begin attending Sabbath service, at the Ridge, and ultimately enrolled in baptism class.

"Then the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the Lord God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me" (Exodus 9:1). The weeks approaching my December 28th, 2002 baptism were the greatest stages of transition in my life. I knew the Lord's spirit was working in me. Things I once loved, I begin to despise. I became a vegetarian. I stopped listening to secular music. I became faithful in returning tithe to the Lord. My attitude toward life and people were turned around. Instead of seeing what I did not have, I begin to praise the Lord for blessing me so abundantly. I realized that the desire I had as a child to find truth was really the voice of Jesus saying to me, "You will call upon me and go and pray to me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek me and find me, when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you and I will bring you back from your captivity." I finally had my answer! Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. I was searching for Jesus the entire time and I did not know it. Now I see clearly that I was being held captive by the ignorance of God's love and mercy. I now know that slavery to my ignorance was actually slavery to the devil himself. For years I had secretly blamed God for the devil's wrong doings, but through faith in Christ Jesus, I have finally been made wise unto salvation. Now I have the peace which surpasses understanding, because Jesus, my lord and savior, and the author and finisher of my faith, has called me, and delivered me out of mental Egypt! Amen.

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