Greetings!
I love the Word of God--"it is my meditation all the day." Ps. 119:97. One of the most thought-provoking verses of Scripture is Revelation 12:11: "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death." Have you ever shared your testimony--your own personal story on how you found Jesus and how He saved you from your sins?
I want to share my story with you. I was raised a Roman Catholic. My Italian mother was a beautiful woman and never said an unkind word about anyone. My father was a very hard working man and an excellent provider. I was blessed with wonderful parents who were happily married for 56 years. They raised me to be a good Catholic boy.
I rarely prayed to Jesus, but instead I said thousands of Hail Marys because I had attended Catholic schools for 12 years that were dedicated to the Virgin Mary. served as an altar boy at the Cathedral of Annunciation for two years and was required to attend mass every Sunday or go to confession for committing a mortal sin. I was taught that Mary was the way to salvation since she was the "Mother of God" and "co-redeemer". Our home was decorated with statues of the Madonna, and one vase, shaped like her face, sat by my mother's bedside. Inside were a rosary, palm branches, and a crucifix with Jesus on the cross.
After I graduated from St. Mary's High School, I went to San Joaquin Delta College for two years. After receiving my degree, I went to UC Davis to complete my undergraduate work with plans to attend law school. My weekly routine was to go to school and get drunk on Friday and Saturday nights. After all, the priests drank alcohol so I thought it was OK for Christians to get drunk too. On weekends, I worked at my father's liquor store and was very popular with my under-aged friends because I could provide the booze.
But my life took a radical turn at UC Davis. I took a class called Philosophy of Religion and accepted the lie that people believe in a supreme being because of their fear of death and no existence beyond the grave. "Therefore," the teacher said, "Christians came up with the "concept" of eternal life and an eternal being." Consequently, I bought the lie that there was no God and graduated from UC Davis an atheist.
That summer I got a job working at San Joaquin County Juvenile Hall. I wanted to take a year off before attending law school, but my plans changed since I got my girl friend, Maria, pregnant and had to marry her because it was the moral thing to do.
Eight months later, I rushed her to the hospital with severe labor pains. The baby, who was premature, was delivered by caesarian section due to complications. The doctor gave me the bad news after the surgery: "Danny, there are serious problems with the child. I am so sorry--she is deaf, dumb, blind, and has male and female sex organs. She is what we call a Trisomy 18--a genetic defect." I remember crying out, "Oh my God," even though I had denied His existence in college. The doctor asked: "Danny, what do you want to do? Your options are to let nature take its course or keep her alive on life-support?" The child would never know that she even existed, I reasoned, and what kind of life would she have anyway? It was a hard decision to make, but I told the doctor to let nature take its course.
The newborn was transported to UC Davis Medical Center and died 10 hours later. Losing a child even at this age makes a huge impact on a parent's life, so I made another important choice that day and decided to search out God on my own. I felt very guilty for all the mistakes I had made and believed my sins had caused the baby to be born deformed--as if baby Nicole had been cursed for my iniquities. I made the decision to read the Bible, specifically the New Testament, and believed that God would bless my effort and reward me with a healthy child. Catholicism is a works-based religion and I was taught to confess my sins to a priest instead of to Jesus. There were times I had to say a whole rosary, including 53 Hail Marys, as penance for my sins, and my good works would place me in favor with God once again.
After we lost the baby I kept my word and read the Bible from Matthew to Revelation, but did not comprehend much of it. I missed the most important point of the gospel--that we are saved by God's grace alone and become righteous through faith in Jesus Christ. I was trying to become righteous by my own works, and, in a few short months, fell right back into my sinful habits.
Yet one positive thing happened shortly thereafter. I bought a second health food store in Lodi from some Seventh-day Adventists. It was a miracle how I got the money to purchase the store. I also inherited three female employees who were in their late seventies--three vegetarian Seventh-day Adventist women. And to think I would drive to work in my 68 Corvette high on marijuana and snacking on beef jerky. I figured all the vitamins I took would keep me healthy despite my bad habits.
One day one of the employees named Sophie handed me a book called My Son Dan written by a preacher named Dan Collins who was in town holding meetings at her church. The title caught my attention because Dan and I shared the same name and, as I would soon discover, a very similar background and lifestyle as well. The book was a testimony of Dan's conversion from a life of drinking and promiscuity to a victorious life in Jesus Christ. Dan had met Jesus at the cross of Calvary where the Savior had died for his sins thousands of years before. Dan's testimony spoke to my unconverted heart in a new way and planted seeds that would soon sprout as God watered them.
A few days later, Dan Collins walked into Lodi Health Food Store and invited me to his meetings at Fairmont Seventh-day Adventist Church. I had never set foot inside a Protestant church before, and had never heard of a Seventh-day Adventist. In fact, was surprised that I accepted Dan's invitation so effortlessly, but today recognize that it was the Holy Spirit that had set up the divine appointment.
The church was packed in those days. I was nervous and quietly sat down in one of the few seats available. Dan was a dynamic preacher who had been transformed by the grace of God--a gifted evangelist who presented Jesus and His love in a way I had never heard before. I was accustomed to the priests speaking in Latin and the formalism of the mass in my younger years, but Dan was different because he had a personal testimony about how Jesus had delivered him from the same sins that I had committed. His testimony touched my heart in a deep way that evening.
Here was a common man calling sinners to the cross. "Look to the cross where Jesus shed His blood for you," he said. "Lay all your sins at the foot of the cross." "The cross, the cross, the cross," Dan kept repeating, and it was then that divine love reached right inside me, for the first time in my life, and Jesus took my heart in His hands. I responded to Dan's call for baptism and stood up. I looked at Maria and said, "Come with me to the foot of the cross. I need to be cleansed." Oh, the power of the Holy Spirit! I never experienced anything like this before; the overwhelming conviction of sin and a desire to be washed in the blood of the Lamb! I wanted Jesus to set me free from my burdens of sin and guilt, and I wanted it now.
Dan's wife Kay took me to Dan after the service ended, for I had chosen to stay by Maria's side. We were having serious marital problems at the time and were already separated. I thought if only we could take this step together that our marriage would heal. Maria was committed to the Greek Orthodox religion and refused to come with me, yet, my hopes remained alive when Dan said: "Danny, I will baptize you and your wife together one day, but right now you are not ready." His hesitation came from years of experience. He knew I was not ready to surrender everything to Jesus.
Dan was right, for a few weeks later I was back on marijuana, drinking alcohol, and strange women were my frequent one-night companions once again. My life testified that the Bible was true: "His own iniquities shall take the wicked himself, and he shall be holden with the cords of his sins. Proverbs 5:22. Dan knew I was caught in the web of evil and not ready to completely surrender my idols of sex, alcohol, and drugs to Jesus. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Matthew 15:41.
Maria and I divorced soon after, then I met Charise, my second wife-to-be, at the local gym. I asked her out on a date and we went to dinner a few nights later and I got very drunk on Vodka. Would you believe it, I got her pregnant too and married her just like I did Maria. I will never regret that decision (even though we are now divorced), for we have five beautiful children who love the Lord. Charise and I contacted Dan and he came and baptized us together at English Oaks Church in Lodi, just as he had predicted he would do years before. But it was Maria who was sitting by my side when Dan told me that. Only God knew it would be Charise, and not Maria, who would be joining me in baptism that glorious day in Lodi. For many years the two of us served the Lord in health ministry until she left the faith and married another man in 2007.
The next step in my conversion took place in the delivery room at the birth of our first child Giana. Remember the genetic defect the baby had in my first marriage? Fear came over me and I cried out to God while on my knees in the labor room at Lodi Memorial Hospital. I begged God with all my heart: "Please give me this child and I will give you my life." I meant every word and knew the seriousness of my promise. I was looking to God in faith when, all of a sudden, I experienced the presence of a supernatural peace--a peace I cannot describe in words. Oh, what peace filled my heart that day? As the holy presence filled the room, I heard a voice interrupt my thoughts and say, "The child is fine."
Little Giana was born a beautiful and healthy baby. Please listen closely to what I am going to say: Even though God knew I would backslide again, He was calling me while I was yet in sin. The Bible says: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8. What kind of love was this? Jesus had died for me while I was yet His enemy and still living in open sin? His word declares: "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. ... For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Romans 5:6, 10.
Dan Collins had spoken truth at Fairmont church, and the Holy Spirit was watering my soul. The only hope for a hardened sinner to find salvation is through the cross of Calvary. Jesus said: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men [even a sinner like Danny Vierra] unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die." John 12:32, 33. The love of Christ, portrayed on the cross, is like a divine magnet drawing the worst of sinners to Him!
Friend, we cannot change ourselves no matter how hard we try. The Bible says: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil. .... The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jer. 13:23; 17:9. It was only six months after the day I promised the Lord to serve Him with my whole heart, the day he gave me the gift of my daughter Giana, that I backslid again.
I tried to be a good Christian, but hadn't learned that righteousness by works is impossible. I was at a party at my cousin Roy's house and was tossing six-month-old Giana into the air. She was crying, and I was drunk and loaded on marijuana. Roy came over to me and asked me what I was doing. "I am trying to make her laugh," I said. My cousin answered: "Look at her face." In my drunken stupor I heard that still small voice once again: "I gave you this child. What have you done for me?" God is merciful and longsuffering. I was speechless for here was the precious gift that God had given me, baby Giana, and I was taking it all for granted. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I cried the sinner's prayer and thought of the commitment I had made to God.
We are only saved by Christ's merits--by putting on the garments of His righteousness by faith. I did not understand Jesus' saving grace--first, by leading us to repentance He covers our sins with His own blood that He shed on the cross; and second, by giving us freely of the Holy Spirit, He can keep us from committing the same sins again (see Jude 24; 1 Cor. 10:13). Many omit the second half and believe in the false gospel of once saved always saved, but Jesus is able to" keep you from falling" (Jude 24), but we must "die daily" (1 Cor. 15:31) or we will find ourselves a "castaway" (1 Cor. 9:2). Jesus came to save us from our sins, not in them (Matt. 1:21). Praise God for His mercy and power that led me to repentance and confession of my sins. Indeed there "is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Tim. 2:5.
How I remember my baptism. Besides holding me under water for what seemed like minutes, Dan anointed me for service in the Lord's vineyard. He arrived late to the church that Sabbath because the wiring had burned up in his motor home and he had to find another ride. "Satan," he said when he got there, "does not want you baptized, Danny. God has a very special work for you to do, a large work, but I do not know the exact detail other than it is a very special ministry for Him." He then shared a number of Bible promises with me. A few months later, the Lord blessed me with Modern Manna Ministries--a very special ministry that combines the message of health reform with the gospel of salvation--a ministry that teaches the Three Angels' Messages of Revelation 14:6-12.
Before I close, I want to share another spiritual insight with you. Please study Romans 8:1-4 closely: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Study what it means to live the "law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus."
I tried to be a good Adventist by my works of obedience to God's law. I still had baggage left over from my Catholic upbringing, but have since learned that I cannot change myself or keep God's law and become righteous in my own strength and power. The "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus" means that Christ will impart His righteousness (His character) to you as the Holy Spirit dwells in you. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said: "I delight in the law of God after the inward man (Rom. 7:22)." The law is a transcript of His character and it is true that we are "saved by His life (Rom. 5:10)" or perfect obedience to the law. Jesus takes on new meaning as we compare scripture with scripture and learn that "Christ in you, [is] the hope of glory (Col. 1:27). We are saved by Christ's righteousness as the life also of Jesus is "made manifest in our mortal flesh (2 Cor. 4:11)."
When we accept Christ as our personal Savior we are justified or declared righteous: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God." Romans 3:24, 25. We are justified (declared righteous) by God's grace and sanctified (made holy) by His Holy Spirit (see Romans 15:16). "Christ has made a way of escape for us. He lived on earth amid trials and temptations such as we have to meet. He lived a sinless life. He died for us, and now He offers to take our sins and give us His righteousness. If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ's character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God just as if you had not sinned. More than this, Christ changes the heart. He abides in your heart by faith. You are to maintain this connection with Christ by faith and the continual surrender of your will to Him; and so long as you do this, He will work in you to will and to do according to His good pleasure." Steps to Christ, p. 62.
Glory be to God,
Danny Vierra |
