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Apr. 24, 2005 This is something that happens to me time and time again. In 1999, when I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, and before I had begun to use Microsoft Word and Internet, I went daily to the Phoenix Public Library, which, by the way, is the most beautfiul, modern, efficient library I have ever seen, with all books and periodicals on open shelves. There are computers too, only I opted not to get in the mad rush to get one each morning. Instead, I would get a big pile of books on physics and mathematics and sit there all day working problems on my TI-85 calculator, or I'd get out books in one of the languages I read, and sit there all day looking up words. To be able to do this, instead of working, was like Paradise to me. Anyway, a man of about 30 came over one day when I was at the library, and introduced himself to me. I'm always affable and glad to meet people, but in the US, I've found that most of the people who introduce themselves do so to beg or swindle, to propose lewd activities or to proselytize. This man fell in the third category. He was there to talk to me about Jesus. Of course, I've heard everything there is to hear about Jesus at least 1000 times, but I suppose I was willing to hear it the 1001st time as well. So I did not tell him not to bother me. Actually, he was a very presentable, likeable man in his early thirties, who said he worked as a skip-tracer for Morgan Stanley & Dean Witter's Discover, in their Phoenix collections department, as he had lost a job he had held in law enforcement as a college-graduate in criminology. He, his wife and his child lived somewhere on Phoenix's north side. He invited me to attend services at a church called Tikvah Bamidbar (Hope in the Desert) Messianic Congregation, at 16215 North Tatum Boulevard in Phoenix. I tried several times to decline politely, but he was so persistent that I finally caved in and went. In fact, he drove me out there in his car two or three times. Tikvah Bamidbar is basically a Jewish congregation that believes in Jesus. This was no novelty for me. I'd been approached by Jews for Jesus several times in New York. Jews for or against Jesus, Christians for or against Jesus--it's all the same to me. The skip-tracer was not himself Jewish. I recall the last evening I went with him. I was one of the few people in the congregation that could sing the Hebrew songs they sang. I listened attentively to the sermon. When the sermon was over, the preacher asked if there was anybody in the congregation who had not previously received Jesus but was willing to open his heart and receive him. I am always willing to be saved. If someone can show me the way, great! Do it! So I raised my hand. I recall I was the only one that did so. He came down from the altar and walked over to me, blessing me and uttering some prayers. A few minutes later services ended. My skip-tracer friend was elated. I told him that I had been in earnest when I offered to receive Jesus, but that I didn't feel any kind of elevation or enlightenment. He told me I would feel something like that in due time. I answered that I'd be glad if I did. Anyway, he was convinced I had been saved, and probably counted me as one of his conversions. The skip-tracer came to the library only about once a month, and as it worked out, I left Phoenix on the spur of the moment some few days after that, so I never saw him again. I didn't have his telephone number or address. There was no way to call him to say good-bye. Incidentally, in one of our discussions about religion, I mentioned that the story of Noah isn't true. The skip-tracer, acting like a reporter who had breaking news, told me Noah's ark had just been discovered. So later I had to tear myself away from my lessons in thermodynamics and Modern Greek to go check out the latest on Noah's ark. I found a very recently published book which listed all the dozens of discoveries of Noah's ark. I suppose that he was talking about a French man with the Spanish name of Navarro, who had said he found a piece of driftwood above the tree-line on Mount Ararat in Turkey. The problem was that people who had dated the driftwood by means of radiocarbon techniques had gotten widely divergent answers. This meant I had to go get a book on radiocarbon dating in order to figure out what I thought of the reliability of radiocarbon dating. I couldn't draw any conclusions, except for one little fact. The leading laboratories doing this kind of testing, like Zürich, Arizona and Oxford, who also tested the shroud of Turin, get results with remarkable mutual correspondence. This may mean that the divergent dates included some falsified dates. Anyway, a piece of driftwood, however it got there, is not an ark. I waited a few days after that visit to Tikvah Bamidbar to see if a feeling of sanctity or faith or elation would overtake me, but nothing happened. Eventually I just forgot all about it. So I was back to where I started from, back to my thermodynamics and my Greek, without Jesus and without Noah. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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