I grew up exposed to Christianity, but in my late teens I concluded that the Bible was a compilation of myths, and, compared to the Mahabharata and Arabian Nights, rather inferior ones. But, after traveling the world and diving deeply into the great religions, I grew tired of seekers after truth. I wanted to be a finder of it. My family urged me to read the Bible and visit a church. I did so ginge
rly. I visited a mega-church in southern California with chorus lyrics projected on a big screen. The meandering tunes and euphoric devotees made me want to reach for a pinch of salt. The pastor, however, preached salvation through Christ alone. He promised that if I would walk to the altar and repent before God in Jesus’ name, I would receive the Holy Spirit. I doubted him, but I was rational. Faith is the daughter of doubt. I had crossed the Himalayas and met the Dalai Lama. I had trekked through a steaming Java jungle to a Sufi shrine. I could walk down this air-conditioned aisle and prove or disprove the pastor’s claim. At the altar, I prayed a rather impudent prayer. “God, I know you exist. If this is the way to know you personally, I accept it.” If I had been God (which fortunately for all of us I am not), I would have responded to my impertinence by reducing me instantly to a smoldering grease spot. Instead, a light flickered on in my heart. I had been in the occasional midnight chant in Asia, and I attributed this sensation to mere ambience. But it lasted. It lasted until today and will last beyond the horizon of time. I was saved. The problem was that my mind was far behind my heart. My overly “educated” brain possessed clear and convincing proofs that the Bible was philosophically and scientifically wrong. Either the Bible or my brain had to give. So, I began to devote myself to proving or disproving the Bible. To my ongoing humiliation, the battering rams of “enlightenment” kept splintering against the impervious gates of Scripture. Everywhere I turned—archaeology, paleontology, astronomy, history, physics, mathematics, and philosophy—the Bible proved right, and I proved wrong. I burned with shame to think how many Christians I had “defeated” in debate and how smugly superior I had felt to them. How could God have any desire to love me, who had been such an arrogant fool? The answer came when I found I could witness comfortably to Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and skeptics, because I had once embraced their positions. In the summer of 2008, my church asked me to teach an adult theology class for three Sundays. I was extremely nervous. I simply did not know the Bible well enough to teach it. But I figured the best way to learn, as the adage goes, is to teach. During those first three Sunday lessons, I was bathed in sweat. By the third, I learned that no substitute teacher had been found, and I ended up teaching the Bible, verse by verse, repeatedly, from then until Sunday, May 29, 2016. In the course of doing this, I grappled with every problem and seeming contradiction in the Bible that I could find. From apparent discrepancies in chronology and with science, to the arcane mystery of Solomon’s Sea, I discovered, through 8,000 hours of research and teaching and 1,005 GB of writing original course material, that the Bible is totally inerrant. I was blessed to have a class of devoted and highly educated adults. Among them were a trained and professional theologian, philosophers, educators, mathematicians, physical scientists, a rocket scientist (literally), and Bible students of many decades. They were of inestimable help in correcting and guiding me, as I presented and tested my lessons. As iron sharpens iron, so we sharpened each other. I turned my original course material into eighteen books on theology (and another nine on secular topics). These were all self-published, but I now have a book traditionally published by Wipf & Stock, entitled The Biographies of Jesus' Apostles: Ambassadors in Chains. I attended one semester at Keble College, Oxford University, but did not like it. I completed pre-med at Florida International University and matriculated to the University of Miami School of Medicine and then realized that becoming a physician was not for me. The knowledge of science and math I gained, however, have always served me well. I spent a long career in logistics, becoming Director of International Development for Brinks, Inc. opening new companies or divisions in Italy, Belgium, Jordan, India, Singapore, and Pakistan. After becoming a Christian at 36 years old, I took the job of Manager of Grant Writing Services for World Vision. There I fell in love with my wife, Madlene, who was Manager of Marketing Resources. We traveled together to Ghana and Chad, and the work we did there resulted in a grant of $11 million for the Ghana project and $500,000 for the Chad project. After that, I worked in Hollywood as a scriptwriter (something I still do on the side), and then I worked for FedEx in management for five years. Madlene and I opened an online logistics software company in 2005 and sold it to Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company in 2018. In May 2022, I earned a master’s degree in Theology with High Distinction at Liberty University’s Rawlings School of Divinity, Lynchburg, Virginia. I live in rural Massachusetts and own a parcel delivery company (The Parcel Team, www.theparcelteam.com) with sixty-five employees and thirty-four vans, making about two million deliveries per year. I host an apologetics website (The Bible History Guy, www.thebiblehistoryguy.com). My aim is to earn a Ph.D., teach, and keep writing.
