I was raised Christian (Pentecostal). One Sunday, when I was about 15 years old (in the year 1994 or 1995), I was in church with my mother, my grandmother, and some of my grandmother's sisters, and a Christian prophet named Todd Hall came to our church to preach. If you were familiar with Christian prophets at that time, he gave out the normal holiness-church Christian mystical prophecies regarding financial blessings, gifts from heaven, spiritual warfare, etc. (Prophets at that time didn't have access to things like people's facebook and twitter feeds, so psychic-like cold-readings were kept to a minimum.) But Todd Hall then gave out a not-so-normal Christian prophecy that motivated me to hate myself and destroy my own love of human nature for almost a decade.
He gave a prophecy that went something like, "The Lord told me that in the year 2000, all of the homosexuals in the world are going to be burned alive in fire. God is going to burn them up." I remember the entire congregation cheered and celebrated.
In the midst of all their joy was this awfully FRIGHTENED 15 year-old, completely afraid. That man and that congregation had no idea how much he scared this gay teenager. I didn't want to be burned alive, and I didn't want "the Lord" to hate me. From that point forward in my life, I became your typical bible thumper and hated the fact that I had been attracted to men. I tried to like women, and I prayed almost every day to at least enjoy seeing a pair of tits. But I never could deny myself, sneaking into my uncle's bedroom when he wasn't home and looking at his porn stash, just to look at the naked men - I quickly flipped past any page that had some naked female model and feasted my eyes on the male form. And when my mother bought me a computer... and the internet...
As we all know, the year 2000 came and went, and no homosexual was burned alive (not by the Lord anyway). Nonetheless, Todd Hall (whom I have long-since forgiven) expected this from the god of his imagination - and so did the church, and so did I. As a result, I became this hypocritical, provocative, and arrogant "unfag" that became very religious and emotionally distraught.
A few years later in 1999, while still dealing with my self-hatred, I worked at Six Flags America in Largo, Maryland. While leaving the park one night, heading to the employee exit, I happened to gaze at the stars. Star gazing wasn’t something I normally did, but there was this odd-looking star in the sky that grabbed my attention. While walking and looking at this odd-looking star, the star shot off in a spiral and flew out into space at an incredible speed. I stopped walking and dropped my mouth in complete awe. I looked around to see if anyone else just saw what I had seen, but they were teenagers, running around and playing. I was dumbfounded and lonely. At that point in my life, I didn't want to see something like that; I was already fighting my attraction toward men, and now I'm seeing UFOs?! A friend of mine, who I'm still friends with, told me a few years ago that she remembers me asking her if she had seen the light in the sky that night (I probably sounded absolutely insane to her). Needless to say, this, along with my homosexual feelings, was something I didn’t feel comfortable talking about with anyone.
As the years went on, I read the bible, my faith tottered and I was no longer Christian. Then I stumbled across Brent's bible commentaries (http://www.awitness.org/bible_commentary/index.html) and tossed the book in the trash (it wasn't until later that I realized I tossed out a few pearls). I remember feeling like a great boulder had been lifted off me.
In the year 2005, I read in the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, the line where Yeshua said, "A person old in days will not hesitate to ask a child 7 days old about his place in life and he will live." I understood this with complete clarity, so I decided to 'try it out'. I went to God empty handed like a naked, pitiful, broken child, assuming nothing. Then YAHWEH, the God I did not know, answered me. I was first answered by large doses of compassion and mercy which have never ceased, then dream after dream explaining things, then those spacecrafts like the one I had seen all those years ago (who had later become messengers or ministering angels to me, and have never left). Brent, who is before me and has known God roughly 30 years longer than I, has been my help, speeding along my travels as he himself continues his journey.
Yahweh God said to me, "I am One. I am not part nor am I with anything; I became everything; I am everything, and I am more than everything. If you humbly seek my face, I will give you compassion. If you seek justice, I will be your defense. If you seek a faithful life, I will give it eternal. Your flesh will not undergo decay." This I received directly from the Living God.
Updated 3/23/2019
