Welcome, Country Crock. Good to see someone reading through the archives.

A good and fair question. Might even be worth a whole article. I’ll put up a little now, and if I find time, I may get an article done on it.

Why did I believe? ….

Well, I was raised in a theistic household, though not a devotedly Christian one. So I think I always sort of held a tacit idea that there was a God, more or less like the one in the Bible.

When I started to seriously look at the faith, in my late teens, I did find some perspective on life that the faith provided, which was lacking from my life at the time. And the morals of the faith were the sort of guidelines that, if adopted, would guide me away from some *ahem* less than optimal actions I was taking. And I found that the people I was befriending at church were mostly decent young folk with solid plans for life. (Quite different from the crowd I mostly hung with at the time.)

As I seriously looked into the faith and seriously tried to understand the God I wanted to honor and serve, I found understanding, direction, explanations, purpose, and more that made sense and seemed very good. (I can honestly say that I still see much of that same good in the faith. If you look in the archives, you’ll see an article I wrote called “The Good of the Church”.)

Over the years my faith continued to grow. I felt that I was close to God, that I was serving Him. I read the Bible many time through. I studied theology and apologetics. I witnessed. I sought to live the faith out. And though it seems odd to me now, it made sense and I was sure it was true. I was convinced that I was relating to God.

And when I moved into the Orthodox Church, I REALLY thought I’d tapped into the Mother Vein of spirituality. (In some ways I did actually.) To say that my faith took a much deeper, richer turn then is no exaggeration.

OK, that’s some of it. [Dang near did write an article on the fly there. ]

Don’t know the Xindi.

Yep. Got just a little of a Geek streak in me too.

“Zinti”? I believe you mean either the Kzinti or the Xindi.
(Sorry. I am such a total geek.)

“But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Does he realize that Jesus was wrong? He didn’t stay in the grave 3 days and 3 nights. Just wanted to point that one out…Makes it even funnier when Heatlight says the other predictions made in the passage came true in this blog. I love irony…