Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger has announced that after years of being an “agnostic” and a “skeptical philosopher,” he has now converted to Christianity.

“It is finally time for me to confess and explain, fully and publicly, that I am a Christian,” the 56-year-old wrote on his blog.

“Followers of this blog have probably guessed this, but it is past time to share my testimony properly. I am called to ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’ One of the most effective ways to do so is to tell your conversion story. So, here is mine,” he began.

In the detailed account, Sanger takes readers through his decades-long conversion process.

The online encyclopedia co-founder recalled early memories of going to the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, with his parents.

“My father was an elder in our church when I was a small child. I remember a few Bible commentaries on the bookshelves, which I found forbiddingly difficult,” he wrote.

Sanger said that he asked many questions about God and faith as a young child, but by his teen years he resolved that God did not exist and belief in Him seemed “irrational.”

“Without realizing it, I probably stopped believing in God when I was 14 or 15: even today, I do seem to remember the belief slipping away, as I occasionally mused that I no longer prayed or went to church,” he shared.

A few years later he settled in, becoming a “philosopher and a so-called methodological skeptic,” which he describes as “someone who withholds beliefs” that cannot be known “with certainty.”

Sanger shared, “When I got serious about matters, I would say, ‘I do not even know what ‘God’ means.’ But generally, I called myself an agnostic.”

By the time he arrived at college, Sanger knew he wanted to study philosophy and aimed to become a college professor.

However, he quickly became disillusioned with academia because of a lack of “any sincere concern for truth” among fellow philosophers.

Sanger said he took the most issue with modern atheists who claimed that “they simply lacked a belief that God exists, but their mocking attitude screamed that God did not exist.”

“I was always willing to consider seriously the possibility that God exists. They were not. Nor was I very hostile to religion,” he explained.

By 2001, Sanger had started Wikipedia and also began to more seriously search out whether God existed.

“After enough years of dealing with these ‘adepts,’ the thought slowly dawned on me: maybe, just maybe, I too had been indoctrinated, in a way. Perhaps I had misunderstood things I only thought I had understood,” he wrote. “Perhaps I had not been exposed to the best representatives of the faith. In short, perhaps, I had not given Christianity a fair shake. And yes, I couched this in terms of ‘Christianity’ to myself: I never found any interest in other religions. This thought sat uncomfortably in the back of my mind for many years.”

In 2010, he decided to crack open the Bible – not for him, but for his sons – because it is “the most influential book in the history of the world, bar none.”

“One cannot call oneself well educated in the West if one has not read it,” he expressed while admitting that reading parts of it did not “make much of an impression.”

“It was interesting literature, to be sure. I know now that I simply did not understand what I was reading very well. I merely assumed there wasn’t anything terribly deep to understand,” Sanger explained.

Sanger would not revisit the Bible until years later.

After completing a 7,000-word essay titled “Why Be Moral,” and a companion piece, “A Theory of Evil,” he began to think more about the root of good and evil.

I concluded the latter essay this way:

What makes humanity loveable, and what inspires the most devotion toward heroes and leaders, is the capacity for creation, the ability to invent, build, preserve, and restore whatever is good, i.e., that which supports and delights flourishing, well-ordered life. What makes evil individuals worthy of our righteous anger is their capacity for destruction of the good, due to their contempt for human life as such.

If so, then the love for God may be understood as a perfectly natural love of the supremely creative force in the universe. For what could be greater than the creator of the universe, and what could be more loveable? And then it certainly makes sense that they would regard Satan as a force most worthy of our hatred and condemnation, since Satan is held to be an essentially destructive entity, the one most contemptuous of human life as such.

He concluded that in both essays, he was beginning to show a change in his attitude toward Christianity.

“Whereas before I had been merely skeptical and cool toward Christianity, I now felt warm toward it. I had come to morally approve of it – it was not just tolerable, but positively likable,” he said.

Sanger decided, this time, to read the Bible for himself.

“I am not sure why I began to read the Bible so obsessively and carefully, as I did,” he described. “When I really sought to understand it, I found the Bible far more interesting and – to my shock and consternation – coherent than I was expecting.”

Sanger downloaded the YouVersion Bible app and used a 90-day reading plan to make “Bible study a serious hobby.”

He began a deeper dive into theology to only realize that “despite having a Ph.D. in philosophy, I had never really understood what theology even is.”

“Theology is, I found, an attempt to systematize, harmonize, explicate, and to a certain extent justify the many, many ideas contained in the Bible. It is what rational people do when they try to come to grips with the Bible in all its richness,” Sanger explained.

The former philosopher said at this point, he also began to “talk to God.” By 2020, Sanger began reading the four Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and told himself, “I should admit to myself that I now believe in God, and pray to God properly.”

Sanger admits his conversion is “anti-climatic,” but true and sincere.

“I never had a mind-blowing conversion experience. I approached faith in God slowly and reluctantly—with great interest, yes, but filled with confusion and consternation,” he shared.

Sanger added that while his conversion has been “uncomfortable” at times, he is a part of “something like an orthodox Christian faith.”

Although he has not found a church home, he encourages everyone to read the Bible daily.
Sources:CBN News

http://theendtimeradio.com

എഡ്മണ്ടൺ പട്ടണത്തിലുള്ള വിവിധ മലയാളം സഭകളിലെ പാസ്റ്റർമാരും വിശ്വാസികളും ഒന്നു ചേരുന്ന യുണൈറ്റഡ് ക്രിസ്ത്യൻ ഫെല്ലോഷിപ്പ് എഡ്മണ്ടൺ രൂപീകൃതമായി. മാറാനാഥ ചർച്ചിൽ വച്ച് നടന്ന യോഗത്തിൽ വിവിധ ദൈവദാസന്മാരും ദൈവമക്കളും പങ്കെടുത്തു . അടുത്ത 2 വർഷത്തേക്കുള്ള ഭാരവാഹികളെയും യോഗത്തിൽ തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്തു.

ജനറൽ പ്രസിഡൻ്റായി തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്ത പാസ്റ്റർ വിൽ‌സൺ കടവിൽ, മാറാനാഥാ പെന്തക്കോസ്റ്റൽ ചർച്ചിന്റെ സീനിയർ പാസ്റ്ററാണ്. ജനറൽ സെക്രട്ടറിയായി പാസ്റ്റർ മനീഷ് തോമസ് തിരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു. ഫെയ്ത് ക്രിസ്‌ത്യൻ അസംബ്ലിയുടെ ശുശ്രൂഷകനാണ്. ജനറൽ ട്രഷററായി ഡോ. തോമസ് വർഗീസ്, മാറാനാഥാ തിരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു. വൈസ് പ്രസിഡൻ്റുമാരായി പാസ്റ്റർ ജോഷുവ ജോൺ ( ഇമ്മാനുവേൽ ഗോസ്പൽ അസംബ്ലി ), പാസ്റ്റർ സാം ഡേവിഡ് ( ബെഥേൽ മലയാളി പെന്തക്കോസ്റ്റൽ ചർച്ച് ) , ജോയിന്റ് സെക്രട്ടറിയായി സൂരജ്‌ ചക്കപ്പൻ എന്നിവരെയും കമ്മിറ്റി അഗങ്ങളായി പാസ്റ്റർ ജോസഫ് ജോർജ്, പാസ്റ്റർ ജേക്കബ് തോമസ്, പ്രൈസ് എബ്രഹാം എന്നിവരെയും തിരഞ്ഞെടുത്തു .

വിവിധ ഡിപ്പാർട്മെൻ്റുകളുടെ ഭാരവാഹികളായി പാസ്റ്റർ ഫ്രാൻസിസ് അലക്സാണ്ടർ ( പബ്ലിസിറ്റി) , പാസ്റ്റർ അജിത് ജോൺ ( യൂത്ത് ), ഇവാ. ഷിജു മാത്യൂ( പ്രയർ ), ഇവാ. ജോഷുവ കുര്യാക്കോസ് ( കമ്മ്യൂണിറ്റി റിലേഷൻസ് ), പാസ്റ്റർ ജോജി തോമസ് ( ഇവാഞ്ചലിസം) ജോയൽ തോമസ് ( മീഡിയ ) എന്നിവരും തെരഞ്ഞെടുക്കപ്പെട്ടു.
Sources:christiansworldnews

http://theendtimeradio.com

A watchdog is sounding the alarm about increasing anti-Christian persecution in India, the world’s most populous nation.

Joel Veldkamp, head of international communications at Christian Solidarity International, told CBN News that the intensifying situation comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to the U.S. this week to meet with President Donald Trump.

The encounter could offer an opportunity for Trump and the West to pressure Modi to stem the tide of persecution, according to Veldkamp. The watchdog said the most “extreme case” of persecution is unfolding in Manipur, a state in India’s northeast.

“This is a place where, about two years ago, the region exploded into anti-Christian violence,” Veldkamp said. “There was a conflict over land rights about who had what right to own what land in the territory, and it turned into a religious conflict.”

And that conflict forced 40,000 Christians to flee their homes over the course of a few weeks. With nearly two years passing since that chaos, the situation remains grim for the majority Christian Kuki-Zo community.

“Most of them now live in refugee camps where the rates of deaths from cancer, and kidney failure, and other treatable illnesses have really skyrocketed, because they simply have no access to medicine or to basic supplies,” he said. “And that violence against this specific group of Christians called the Kuki-Zo people continues until this day.”

Just months ago, one of the most horrific examples of violence unfolded.

“There was a mother of three, a Christian woman from this indigenous group … who was attacked by Hindu militants, raped, and burned alive,” Veldkamp said. “And that set off another round of violence between the groups, scores of people were killed, more people were displaced, and the government really seems kind of completely absent from this situation.”

He added that the humanitarian aid to those suffering is “weak” and that government officials have sometimes been complicit, if not lackluster, in their response.

These issues come as India struggles with rising persecution. The majority of the nation — about 80% — is Hindu and the small Christian minority, which makes up just 2%, is often targeted and blamed for problems.

“India has a long tradition of democracy, of the rule of law,” Veldkamp said. “But, in the last 10 years or so, things have been getting really systematically worse for Christians and other religious minorities in India.”

With the government being led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — a cohort Veldkamp said has “roots in Hindu nationalism” — problems have persisted and Christian persecution has raged.

“The party that’s in power has been able to use kind of religious identity as a weapon that gets its opponents to stay in power,” he said. “So it encourages its supporters to vote for it because they say they are the true Hindu party — they are the party that will protect India’s Hindu identity.”

Veldkamp continued, “And, of course, that kind of rhetoric requires an enemy, and, unfortunately, India’s very small Christian population becomes that enemy in the eyes of many of the followers of this political party.”

Veldkamp is hoping Modi’s meeting with Trump and other U.S. officials Wednesday and Thursday — which is certain to focus on other issues like immigration and tariffs — could also help stem some of the tides of persecution.

“It’s a very important week for U.S.-Indian relations,” he said. “Trump has a relationship with this Prime Minister, and Trump also promised to be a president who would care for persecuted Christians in the world and try to protect them.”

Veldkamp continued, “So he doesn’t have to flip over the table. He doesn’t have to make threats. He doesn’t have to harm the relationship. But while he’s in the room with the prime minister, I think the president should just say to him, ‘Look, we know this is happening…we know you’re probably not happy about it. We encourage you to really do something about it.”

India ranks 11th on the Open Doors World Watch List, a ranking of the worst nations in the world for Christian persecution.
Sources:faithwire

http://theendtimeradio.com