How I Got Religion, And Then Lost It
Getting in Deeper
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About two years after my initial conversion, I joined a Pentecostal sect.
I was living at the time in a county foster home in a different city from where my parents and the few friends I had made were living. The first Sunday I was there, I asked my guardian for directions to the nearest church in the neighborhood. I did not find any church where she said it was, and I began looking for another one. About a mile from the home, I found the First Apostolic Church, where by this time the morning service was under way. One of the members made my acquaintance after the service, offered me a ride home and said he would pick up me up for the evening service if I wished to return. There were services on Tuesday and Friday evenings as well, and there was always someone apparently eager to provide me with transportation.
I did not at first notice anything out of the ordinary about the services. I might have noticed a general exuberance that I was unaccustomed to, but I do not remember giving it any thought. It was probably during the second week when a young man named Bill told me what was different about that church.
Bill had given me a ride home after one of the evening services. After stopping in the driveway, he asked me whether I believed I was saved. I told him I did. "Are you sure?" he asked. I said "Pretty sure," or something to that effect.
That got him started. We sat in his car in for a long while as he explained what the First Apostolic Church believed about salvation, and he quoted the scriptures on which the church based its beliefs. I found the scriptural arguments convincing, and for the next four years believed that anybody who was not similarly convinced was not saved.
I was a now a Pentecostal, and not just an ordinary Pentecostal. I had been recruited by Oneness Pentecostals, who also called themselves Apostolics. A brief presentation of their distinct beliefs is at http://www.upci.org/about/index.asp#doctrinal. What the Web site does not make clear is that Oneness Pentecostals generally believe, or least did believe when I was a member, that deviation from any Oneness doctrine will condemn a person to hell. We believed in my church that a member of any other church, even another Pentecostal church, was not a true Christian. We believed they were as lost as people who had never believed in Jesus.
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