The priest was a recent seminary graduate. He was enthusiastic, and he wasted no time in explaining his goal for our class. He wanted to open our minds by introducing us to the academic world of theology. He explained how this would be different from any religious class we had ever had before. The goal was demythologization. He started with the story of the Red Sea and explained that, though the Bible says that Egyptians who were following the children of Israel were swallowed up by the Red Sea, that the truth was that the Egyptian’s heavy cumbersome chariots got stuck in the mud.
I looked around at the others in class. I saw my confusion mirrored in their faces. But it was more than confusion, it was deep sense of insecurity. Some even left that first class in tears. As time went on and Bible story by Bible story went through the process of demythologization, many of my classmates began to lose their faith. I was reminded of how the candles were snuffed out at the end of mass. There was a darkness that seemed to settle on the souls of those around me.
In the darkness I felt my soul begin to slumber. The passion I had felt for God in my childhood was on the verge of being extinguished. But something happened that woke me up. I was introduced for the first time to prophecy. As I began to read and study prophecy, I felt like I had been given a candle that expelled the darkness. My faith was revived with a new sense of wonder.
When I came to my senior year of High School, the religion class was now a philosophy class. Our final project was to write a term paper about something we had learned from either religion or philosophy. I decided to write a paper on the prophecies Jesus had fulfilled from the Old Testament. When I finished it was a twenty-page, single-spaced paper (I didn’t know that you were supposed to use double spacing).
I gave an oral presentation to the class. I shared the opening words of Psalm 22, “ My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” I showed how these were the very words spoken by Jesus on the cross. I went on to show how we could hear Jesus crying out to His Father from the cross in this Psalm as it described what it was like to be crucified. “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed; my heart is like wax within me...they pierce my hands and my feet...They divided up my garments among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing” (Psalm 22:14-18). I watched the words of these prophecies about Jesus’ first coming begin to illuminate the darkness of doubt. After class I was surrounded by those who wanted to hear more. It only takes a spark to relight the candle.
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