God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

   Image from Pixabay I was raised Catholic. Children are trained in the dogmas of the faith, but we were never encouraged to read the Bible. Who needed it? We had the priests, the magic of ancient rites and rituals, the sacredness of Transubstantiation, etc. It was all there in one package. So, when I got to college, I had never heard of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But there was a movement afoot called the charismatic renewal and things were about to change. In the 1960s priests, nuns, Episcopalians, Methodists, Anglicans, etc. were speaking in tongues and prophesying. In 1965, I was swept up into that movement. But that was long ago, and today the knowledge of these gifts and how they function needs to be renewed. Below is the New Testament passage that describes the spiritual gifts: 4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works a...

“As I lay on my back and prayed into the darkness, I saw a Scripture in light—Luke 3:16…” All Scripture passage are from biblegateway.com New International Version (NIV) Because I was raised Catholic, I had never read the Bible until I went away to college. I heard about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for the first time as I read the book by David Wilkerson, The Crossand the Switchblade . He was an Assembly of God (Pentecostal) pastor loving his stable, rural Pennsylvania congregation until the night that God spoke to him clearly to go to New York and help the street gangs there. He converted several gangs and gang members, including a leader named Nicky Cruz, and started an organization called Teen Challenge. It was 1965, and I was a flaky student at the University of Washington. While I was on lunch break at my summer job in the university district, a female colleague sashayed up to the table where I was talking with a fellow student worker. At that very moment, I was disparaging...