Is anyone a "once athiest" that is now a christian? Tell your story.?

Question

I know so many people that are christians that started just like ME! I am not an athiest at all (never have been), but I am not a beleiver in ANY religion. Some strange things have been happening to me lately, though. I am seeking additional information. So, what CHANGES PEOPLE from one end of the spectrum to the other so completely? Many of my christian friends and family members used to be hard-core athiests! What happened?

Answer 1

No real atheist (spelled correctly) would ever backslide to the delusional superstitionism of religion.

Answer 2

There's one character that answers questions here... Don something, I think... who claims to have been an atheist, and now is Christian. I don't believe him.

It is conceiveable to me that someone who is atheist by virtue of having grown up in an atheist family, but has no innate critical thinking skills, could be brainwashed into believing dogmatic nonsense... the brainwashing techniques, developed over nearly 2,000 years, are quite effective. However, I find the idea of someone who arrived at the atheist/agnostic position via a rational intellectual process being converted to a faith-based belief system to be quite unlikely... but probably not impossible. If it was to occur, I think it would have to be because their brains fell out.

Answer 3

I agree with my atheist brethren. No true atheist, one arriving at the fact that God and all spiritual nonsense does not exist, would go back to religions. It does not make sense. Do scientists go back on the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun? It just does not work that way. You do not become enlightened then return to the dark. All these other people reporting that they did actually return to religion were probably not true atheists but agnostics or weak atheists. Or they were atheists because they were raised that way and not because they choose this path.

Answer 4

Several years ago I had an unusual experience concerning an uncle, a distant relative who lived over a thousand miles away.

While driving my car I suddenly felt the unmistakable presence of this relative that I hardly even knew. He was more like someone I had heard about than someone I knew. It was very strange; it felt as though I was momentarily lifted right out of my physical body. I seemed to be suspended somehow beyond space and time, bathed in a love so intense It felt like I could have just disappear into it at any moment if It would have let me. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it seemed to last forever at the same time. I realize how crazy this must sound. The experience was so strong that at first I was afraid I was loosing my grip on reality. I finally managed to chalk it up to an over active imagination.

Three days later I got a call from my aunt telling me that this uncle we are talking about had gone into a coma and died the day I had the experience. It felt like ice water had been poured down my back when she told me this. I had lost any real ideas of God or faith and had become somewhat of an atheist. Needless to say this experience caused me to rethink some of the conclusions I had come to.

I feel blessed to now understand that even in our darkest confusion something loves us so much that it went out of its way to assist me and bring me back to a state of absolute certainty about Gods love for us.
During the experience it seemed like there was a vast amount of information that I was somehow allowed access to. One thing that I came away from this experience understanding beyond any shadow of a doubt was that any Idea that God is unhappy with us or would judge or allow us to be punished for any reason is simply impossible.

I can’t explain the love I felt with words. They simply don’t make words big enough or complete enough to do this. The only way I can begin to convey this love to you is to say that there was simply nothing else there. Nothing but love. No hint of judgment, no displeasure of any sort. It is as though God sees us as being as perfect as we were the day we were created. It is only in our confused idea of ourselves that we seem to have changed.

I hope this is of some help to you. Good luck. Love and blessings.

Your brother don

Answer 5

God was working through them

people change

just do what ur instincts tell u to do

=]

♥

Answer 6

I was once a Christian-hating atheist. Stubborn as the hardest heart out there, and would not believe anything unless I could see it with my own eyes. Through a lot of bad experiences, I felt all Christians were superstitious, cowards, and hypocrites.

One day, I met this guy, and we started dating. I found out he was a Christian, and because I loved him, I tolerated it, and he tolerated my atheism. As time went on, he showed me bits and pieces of the Bible, and though I listened, I wasn't really interested. However, my interest was piqued when he brought up prophecy.

(Before being an atheist, I was in many different religions, and was heavily into the occult, particularly the Tarot, so his mention of prophecy struck a chord in me and I wanted to see how accurate a 2000 year old book could be).

He showed me how the Old Testament prophecies led up to, and were completed by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was something I had never heard before, that, from the hope of a Saviour that'd crush Satan's head, to the serpent 'lifted up' on a pole to save the people, to the circumstances of his birth, the life he led, leading up to Jesus being 'lifted up' on a cross to save the people from their sins, and the resurrection. It interested me, but barely changed my mind about it.

Then he showed me prophecies regarding the end times. Now this is what interested me. How the "wars and rumors of wars" began with WWI as the first truly global war, then WWII, and probably the largest rumor of war, the Cold War. He showed me the prophecies regarding Israel, how, in the end times, it would become a nation again after having been desolate for nearly 2 millenia, how it would thrive and be grander than the original Israel, how it would be in the very land God gave to the Israelites so long ago, how it would be inherited (given to them) instead of taken by war, how it would be created in a strange manner: that it would be like a woman who gives birth before labor pains come (all other nations are created by fighting over the land, and then they become a nation. Israel was created by having the land given to them first and were proclaimed a nation, and *then* they fought for the right to keep it). He showed me how life has progressively gotten harder since WWI, and that each generation gets worse than the prior one (consider that serial murderers were unheard of in the 1700's, a rarity in the 1800's, commonplace in the 1900's [and picking up speed as the century came to a close], and becoming very common nowadays). He showed me the changes in natural disasters, how each year progressed, they are becoming stronger and more frequent, whereas in times past, they were rare. He showed me how Jesus predicted these things were to come at the end days. I agreed, and began to understand.

The more I learned about the prophecies in the Bible, the more I could not deny them. It went against everything I believed, that God told these people, 2000+ years ago, the things that would happen in my generation. Yet, I could not deny the things I'd learned.

This guy was also unlike every Christian I'd ever met. He stood up for his beliefs, even when I doubted. He did the things Jesus said to do, like treating your neighbor the way you want to be treated, sharing all he had with those who needed, teaching about Jesus, among many other things. So I began to believe. I could not deny the prophecies I had read, nor could I deny that his faith in God kept him on the straight and narrow. From my teenage years, up to that point, I had been severely depressed and suicidal, yet I soon saw that my depression was as a direct result from my multitude of sins.

And so I repented of my sins, asked Jesus' forgiveness, proclaimed that Jesus was now Lord over my life, and I would life my life the way Jesus lived. I was now technically a Christian, but my faith was nominal.

Time passed, and my boyfriend and I were married (and still are to this day, 11 years later, and have a family). My faith was weak, but I was willing to learn more. I began to read the Bible more, and my faith grew, though it was still easily shaken by what was drilled into my head from years of public schooling.

As time went on, various things have occured where the *only* explanation for it is by God's direct involvement with our lives. For example, we went out for banana splits one night, and our car broke down in a bad area, and in such a position where my husband couldn't push the car out from halfway in the middle of the street past the stop sign. Suddenly, a clean, white Dodge Ram truck pulled up to us (in the deserts where we lived, there is no such thing as a clean white anything). A thin, fairly tall man in a, expensive-looking white suit came out, and helped my husband push the car up into the nearby parking lot. (Mind you, this guy looked as if he could barely punch his way out of a wet paper bag, yet my husband said that this man bore most of the weight of the car, and my husband barely had to push it at all). When we turned to thank him, both he and his truck were gone (it was about 11pm at night, and the *only* other car on the road was a semi-trailer coming from down the road). What is odd, is the fact that he drove a Dodge Ram (note that Jesus is called the Lamb of God), that everything about him was white and clean (again, not something normal in a desert), and the fact that we can remember every single detail of what happened (even 10 years after the fact), even right down to what the suit looked like, but we could not remember the man's face, not even by the time we arrived home a few minutes later. We later found out that my husband's uncle had a near identical experience about two weeks later.

Another experience was when we went outside to watch the aurora borealis last year. The news mentioned that, because of some circumstances that I can't remember, it would be visible as far south as where we were. It was late at night, and we'd been outside about an hour, waiting for the clouds to pass. They never did. We finally agreed that we were ready to go inside, and just as we turned, we heard a huge crash nextdoor. My husband went to the edge of the driveway, and saw that our neighbor's daughter's Beetle had rolled into the rainwater ditch across the street. We went nextdoor, and (despite not knowing them well at all), told them about what had happened. Come to find out, the gear had slipped out of park, and it managed to roll half an acre straight down their steep driveway without swerving or damaging anything (including itself). My husband helped the neighbor push it out of the ditch, while I kept watch out for the local dogs that tend to wander the streets. Finally, it was out, and he drove it back up their driveway while my husband walked back into our yard. No sooner had we gone halfway up our driveway, than a speeding car (going about 70mph on a 25mph road) had made the sharp turn around the hilly curve that sits next to my neighbor's house and came onto our street. In the end, someone would have died if we hadn't heard that the aurora borealis could be seen in our area.

Sure, they both could be great coincidences. But ever since becoming a Christian, my life has been filled with unique experiences like that, each of which had strengthened my faith. Such as having the car break down while we went shopping, and praying for help, and having my husband's aunt show up the moment we're done praying. Or my mom-in-law praying for me to have twin boys born in late March with an easy birth, and despite all the odds of my doctor telling me "2 girls" and then later "a boy and a girl", born in early-mid April, yet I gave birth to two boys in late March, with no contraction pain as they were due to arrive (*that* totally confounded my doctor, and upset him when I didn't tell him I was having contractions... I merely thought I had gas).

The more I put my faith into God, the more I could see His hand guiding our lives. That was when I had fully given myself to God. We have since endured both hardship and good times. When things were rough, God always made sure we were taken care of, and when things were good, God blessed us, and we passed what we had onto others.

All this, because I was curious how a dusty 2000 year old book could influence the lives of modern people. Heh. My Bible is far from dusty, but well worn, notes all over the place, dog-eared, and bearing the battle-scars of long nights of reading.

If you are interested in learning more about prophecies, some prophecies are unfolding before our very eyes. An interesting one (Isaiah 17), is the utter destruction of Damascus in the timespan of a single night because of its crimes against Israel (Damascus is the oldest city in the world, and has never, in its history, been totally destroyed, and no major city pre-nuclear weapon has been made completely devoid of life in the span of a few hours)... as things stand now in the news, there is a VERY real possibility of this happening *now* (Israel has threatened Syria that if they use WMD's against Israel, they'd blow Damascus off the map). An interesting note on this, is the Bible prophecies "For three transgressions of Damascus, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof" (Amos 1:3). Since Israel's rebirth in 1948, three times has Syria attacked Israel (Independance, 6 day war, Yom Kippur war). Given both those prophecies, the fourth time Syria attacks Israel (the next time) will be the time Damascus will cease to be a city.

One final note on prophecy. The Bible speaks on how the nations of the earth will send their armies to Megiddo. Megiddo is about 10 miles southwest of Nazereth. This act is known as the battle of Armageddon. It is of noteworthy interest that the UN (ahem. United Nations. Nations of the earth...) is considering plans to send peacekeepers the Israel/Lebanon borders. I would not be surprised to see them based at Megiddo.

I thoroughly suggest anyone who wants to know more about the Bible, of Christianity, and salvation to visit these two sites:
http://www.wayofthemaster.com and http://www.livingwaters.com