A Revelation

No, nothing like what was revealed to St. John on that island of Patmos.

A realization that rocked my world was that non-JW's (christians specifically) took the Bible seriously! It wasn't that I didn't have a grasp of this before. It's just that I thought churchgoers, including pastors and priests, had a...feathery approach to it, a light respect, but nothing substantial.

I became aware that this wasn't really so. In service (door to door preaching) one Sunday morning, my group drove past a church. There were a lot of people making their way inside, including a lot teenagers. They were all in their 'regular' clothes, but what caught my attention was they each had a copy of the Bible in their hands and nothing more!

Yes, and their walk and how they held their Bible spoke to me. Telling me they regarded the Scriptures as authoritative and sufficient.

What a difference to what I had known. Since kids we were taught to carry briefcases/bags with all these various books, magazines, tracts, and even the Bible. (The longer you were in The Truth the exponentially bigger your case got to be. Some elders may as well have been transporting tubas.)

I got to see similar scenes like this and felt even a bit of jealousy. This wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back, but it did carry some weight. There was a simple and elegant way they went to their services, no fancy dressing seeming necessary!

Was there something really not right with us?