De-Conversion, Part 5: Studying The King James Bible

[SkepticalDaniel]

It was a day I would not forget, the day I discovered that dreaded website. One of the first things that I read on that site was that the NIV Bible, as well as all modern day Bibles were corrupted, and that the only true Bible was the Authorized 1611 King James Version. This wasn't a problem, though, as I already had two King James Bibles in my possession. After discovering the site, I began to delve deeper into the King James Bible. Of course, the archaic language was a little difficult to read, at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. I'll go so far to admit that I even enjoyed reading the King James Bible, in fact, the KJV that I received as an 18th birthday present from my Papaw is still one of my most prized possessions to this day. My favorite thing in the entire KJV was from the 3rd Psalm of David:

 

"Arise, O LORD; save me, O my God: for thou hast smitten all mine enemies upon the cheek bone; thou hast broken the teeth of the ungodly."

 

-Psalm 3:7

With that verse in mind, it gave me great comfort to know that God would be on my side, no matter what, and I would never have anything to fear... or did I?

 

It wasn't long until after I dived deeper into the KJV, that I began to notice some serious problems. The biggest one being the issue of Soul-winning. For those reading this who've never heard of the term before, or who've never been a Christian, soul-winning is a practice that is popular amongst the IFB churches. How it works is that people from an IFB church will go around busy neighborhoods, knock on the doors of houses, and speak to residents about the Bible. One question that they'll ask is: "If you died tomorrow, are you 100% sure that you'll be going to Heaven?" afterwards, they'll show them the Bible passages about judgement and the "wages of sin is death" and "all have come short", as well as John 3:16, etc. After they're done talking to the resident, they'll give away a King James Bible as a free gift, in hopes that the person will have become indoctrinated (for more insight on how this practice is done, check out this video here:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BXMA4xOS5BY

 

It was videos like this that really got me motivated into wanting to witness the gospel to the whole world. I practiced what I would say if I needed to go on a soul-winning trip over and over again, ready to do whatever it took. There was one person who I in particular, really wanted to save, and that was the girl I'd met my junior year of High School. The Terror of God was upon me, as I prayed over and over again for her salvation, but to no avail. Even worse, my parents were starting to get very concerned about me constantly reading the KJV, and my somewhat overzealous behavior regarding alcohol and other things. Adding insult to injury was also the massive amounts of paranoia regarding the End Times and the New World Order. All throughout my junior and senior year of High School, I fell into depression. The plight of billions of people (most of whom that I knew) burning in Hell forever became almost unbearable. I would find myself crying in the night, praying to God over and over and OVER again to watch the people whom I loved and take care of them, and he seemed to. I simply couldn't get the horrible details from that website out of my mind, and I constantly kept going back to it for support, each time becoming sicker and sicker. By far the most frightening aspect of it all was the very real seeming threat of Hell, not just one the one site, but on one like this, too: http://www.av1611.org/hell.html, these sites taught that Hell was literally at the center of the Earth. Evidence they provided for this idea (if you could call it that) was the fact that Earth was molten underneath, the discovery of the Earth's core in 1936, snip it's from National Geographic magazines which contained excerpts such as "...volcanoes are more like Hell than anyone realizes...", and a story about a team of Russian geologists drilling a hole in remote Siberia and recording the screams of tormented souls on a heat-resistant microphone (which I later found out was a proven hoax, for more information on that matter, check out what Brian Dunning from skeptoid.com has to say: https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4307). Being very naive at the time, I took everything these people said at face-value. Worse, was their ideas about female modesty, which crept constantly into my mind and slowly turned me into a neurotic misogynist. With all this depression, there would be no way possible for me to be joyful and save souls, and on top of that, I began to seriously doubt that I was going to Heaven. I was broken, empty, isolated and lonely. I wanted so badly to escape from this curse, but I couldn't, because it would be Apostasy, and besides, the evidence provided by these people was too overwhelming. The Bible contained many fulfilled prophecies, after all, it agreed with science, history and archaeology, and was written over a period of 1,500 years by 40 different authors in 3 different continents with a clear, consistent, non-contradictory message, so I would've been a fool not to believe any of it. But where was all this depression coming from? I decided I would need to study more and more to understand, so I went to the Old Testament, and found some troubling information:

 

Judges 9:23 "Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech..."

That's right, you read it correctly! The all-good God of the Bible sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem, and this isn't the only occasion of this, either:

 

1 Samuel 16:14-16 "But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him. And Saul's servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee. Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well."

And if you thought that was bad, then you haven't seen anything yet!

 

Isaiah 45:7 "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."

Yes, by his own admission the God of the Bible declares that he is the creator of both Good and Evil. "How could this be?" I thought, "God isn't the author of evil, Satan is!"

 

By the time my senior year came to a close, I'd thought I'd seen the worst of it... I was wrong!

[bleepybloop]

Hi ScepticalDaniel,

 

First I want to thank you for writing these testimonies! I've read all 5 parts and these gave me so much memories from my times with Pentecostal church.

Some are good, some are bad memories. Waiting for the next part.

 

-bb

[SkepticalDaniel]

Hi ScepticalDaniel,

 

First I want to thank you for writing these testimonies! I've read all 5 parts and these gave me so much memories from my times with Pentecostal church.

Some are good, some are bad memories. Waiting for the next part.

 

-bb

Thank you very much for reading! Part 6 is in the making, as we speak!

[Abrooks2007]

And let's not forget Exodus 9:12, when God supposedly hardened Pharoah's heart to keep Israelites into slavery.  So, so many passages in the Bible that either made ZERO SENSE...like that one...or were entirely contradictory to God's supposed benevelont nature, but took me so many years to question.

 

Then again, that's one of the primary reasons why I walked away from organized religion.  Asinine statements from asinine authors trying to control the masses that this doctrine was preached to...and, sadly, doing a very good job at it.

 

Many of my own teen years were of a similar terror, fearful that I'd be burning in 'hell.'  No one deserves that.  NO ONE.

[SkepticalDaniel]

And let's not forget Exodus 9:12, when God supposedly hardened Pharoah's heart to keep Israelites into slavery. So, so many passages in the Bible that either made ZERO SENSE...like that one...or were entirely contradictory to God's supposed benevelont nature, but took me so many years to question.

 

Then again, that's one of the primary reasons why I walked away from organized religion. Asinine statements from asinine authors trying to control the masses that this doctrine was preached to...and, sadly, doing a very good job at it.

 

Many of my own teen years were of a similar terror, fearful that I'd be burning in 'hell.' No one deserves that. NO ONE.

There's still times when it comes back.

[nightflighter]

I feel that "twinge" every so often too.....I was told to read the bible from back to front (Not all backward, naturally! It would'nt make sense then...Kinda like how it does now...) , book by book By the time I got to "galatians", I seen just what a nut case "paul" was. Then he became slightly "more sane", until you get to the red letter stuff, and it sort of "evens out" at that point...But not by much.   I de-converted shortly thereafter.