About the author of Unity in the Body of Christ

Word of God, which hasn’t diminished.)Once, when the U.S. Army moved its anti-aircraft battery out of a field on Belmont Hill right near where I lived, a couple of us kids scoured the grounds for what we could find.I found an olive-green can about the size and shape of a Hunts tomato paste can. It turned out to be a detonator-canister of fulminate of mercury, used to set off the large sacks of powder that propelled the anti-aircraft shells miles into the sky. I threw it at a large rock about 20 feet away. (I was a good pitcher.) It flew right toward the rock, and then at the last moment it veered away from the rock at an angle, which left us two boys scratching our heads. We then took the canister to our parents, who immediately called the police. A little while later a bomb-squad van pulled up and two guys got out with a bucket of water and tiptoed over to where we had placed the canister. They picked it up and gently placed it in the bucket, took bucket with detonator and tiptoed back to the van and slowly drove away. That was the first of a couple very real miracles I have witnessed that saved my life. My angel was working overtime that day.

In the fall of 1968 when I was 22 years old, I went to sea on an old WWII submarine, the U.S.S. Blenny (SS 324), headed for Lisbon, Portugal, then Rota, Spain, and then the Mediterranean Sea for a wonderful three month patrol.

I had grown up sailing small sailboats, so I loved it out at sea on a submarine, which spent most of its time on the surface crashing through immense waves (serving on that boat was like being on a peace-time version of that German movie, "The Boat"). After I had gotten off active duty, sometime in the spring of 1970 I became a baptized member of the Worldwide Church of God. Although this small denomination was at that time an old covenant biased Sabbatarian Christian church, we were imbued with the Holy Spirit as a group and individually, even though many outside our fellowship didn’t think so and labeled us a cult. We were cult-like, but decidedly not a cult. In the most simplistic way possible the apostle Paul defined a Christian as someone who has the indwelling Holy Spirit and is actively being led by this Holy Spirit (Romans 8:9,14). So I was born-again at my baptism, or even before, looking back in time. I had a saving knowledge of God’s Word then, and even more so now. Worldwide members knew their Bible from one end to the other, and we were a praying church as well (Mr. Armstrong was always saying a church walks forward on its knees). But in the year 1995 this Christian church went through a very painful and interesting experience. Through a better understanding of the Scriptures this small denomination came into a good knowledge of the new covenant and became a new covenant evangelical Christian church--a Divine miracle in itself. In my opinion, this miracle couldn’t have been accomplished if the members weren’t filled with the indwelling Holy Spirit. I was a member of that fellowship for over thirty years now, with the exception of 2.5 years spent in a Calvary Chapel right after all the doctrinal changes were made.Very sadly, correct as the Worldwide Church of God is in understanding the application of the new covenant to believers, their HQ and many of their pastors have been very quietly drifting into amillennialism and "replacement theology", which doctrinal eschatological interpretations I view as being extremely inaccurate and having anti-Semitic bias, a bias that has contributed to anti-Semitism in Europe for 1700 years of church history [see and read http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/
prophecies/2ndcoming_1.htm and the links within that introduction section]. When I learned of this quiet but steady drift into these doctrinal beliefs I stopped attending. This Calvary Chapel I attended right after 1995 was in my hometown, and through them I learned from God's Word about all the changes my church had just made and that these changes that had been made up to this point in time were Scriptural. I learned well enough from this fellowship so that I could explain the changes Worldwide had made from God’s Word myself. Amazingly, this tiny Calvary Chapel congregation grew from 12 attending members to 125 members in that same short 2.5 years, and are currently pushing 400 in attendance every Sunday now. Be sure to check out my new section about the Messianic movement of the Holy Spirit at http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/messianicmovement.htm.

The Lord has been inspiring me to use some of my skills in the area of editing and writing on this web site, which has been created for the express purpose of promoting spiritual (not doctrinal) unity and health throughout the body of Christ, and also to promote personal, local church, national and international evangelism. My idea for the site came from a deep desire to help nourish those within the Worldwide Church of God and those who left it, with some of the spiritual nourishment I had received in Calvary Chapel. Right after the doctrinal changes many Worldwide members were hurting and in desperate need of spiritual nourishment from God’s Word, taught from a new covenant bias, not an old covenant bias. I had just come from a denomination that did just exactly that, and extremely effectively. Then the Lord inspired me to widen the focus of this web site to encompass the entire body of Christ. To help accomplish this nourishing of the body of Christ online my site features connective expository sermon transcripts from the gospel of Mark and the Epistles to the Romans and Ephesians (so far), and also features topical Bible studies on Christian growth (personal and marriage/family), prayer, saving faith, prophecies of Jesus Christ’s 1st and 2nd coming, concepts of ministry (for pastors), the all-popular church history section, and finally a whole section on evangelism.

I almost forgot, I attended a small, wonderful, and very friendly Messianic Jewish congregation for two and a half years. The Lord used this time to teach me about the miracle he had just performed in reviving the Jewish branch of the body of Christ over the past 35 years. In that time I learned enough to be able to create a Messianic section for this site to help herald what the Lord has done in the area of reviving the Jewish branch of the His body of believers. Then, through no dissatisfaction whatsoever with my very warm and friendly Messianic brothers, he inspired me to move back to Calvary Chapel. I see it as more of a strategic move to aid in the education of the Gentile side of the body about this fantastic Jewish revival than for any other reason. There are a just a handful Messianic minitries whose main purpose is to help foster understanding and unity between the Jewish and Gentile sides of the body of Christ. The Lord seems to be placing this small handful of ministries where it best suits the cause of unity, so I don't question, although it was very painful leaving this wonderful congregation, a congregation the Lord prepared me to more fully understand by my years of growth and biblical learning as a Sabbatarian believer who observed the biblical Holy Days. Man, does the Lord know what he's doing when he guides our believer growth paths, though we may wonder at times what's going on. That's where hindsight is 20/20. Be sure to visit the Messianic section of the site at: http://www.unityinchrist.com/messianicmovement/twobranches.htm to better understand this fast-growing branch of the body of Christ."

So that is a brief description of my life and the small denomination I used to belong to, and what we’ve been through. This website is totally non-denominational, and uses resources from the best that some of the denominations have to offer, without regard for who they are. I generally try to use material by permission and not fly the Jolly Roger. All material is labeled as to source and where to find full versions of it in print (especially books that still are in print, and cassette sermon tapes), with strong recommendations that you purchase the full version for your own edification (and theirs). In one case a pastor is letting me use his material under the condition that he and his church remain anonymous (Ephesians and the gospel of Mark so far). Since a good deal of the quality connective expository sermons from the gospels and epistles come from him, I most certainly am going to respect his wishes.

The Lord has inspired me to put some pretty awesome material on this site, giving the site a content second to none, with a very wide span of coverage in spiritual material. But to fulfill its mission of bringing spiritual unity through nourishment to much of the body of Christ, and to support worldwide evangelism, the site needs to be passed to Christians hungry for the Word of God--from Christian to Christian. So I hope you bookmark this site as one of your favorites for spiritual nourishment, and if you do, be sure to pass it on to your Christian friends. For a more detailed description of the purpose of this site, be sure to click on the Mission Statement at the bottom of the Homepage.