Born into a Greek Orthodox family, I was raised a Christian, who was also told to pray to the Virgin Mary and the Greek Saints. (These saints were very religious people who usually died horrible deaths at the hands of the Turks/muslims or other religious/pagan groups.) However, throughout my young life, I always seemed to have a hard time trying to worship God, Jesus and pray to Mary and the saints (who by the way number in the hundreds). My mom was the religious guru in our household and told me to pray to the local saint of their island district in Greece. Anyway, my main objective was to please God, but I always felt a tug of war. As if there was a conflict. My mom wanted me to pray equally if not more to the Virgin Mary, especially when I was very ill and deathbound in bed as a young teen and she prayed to Mary and saved me. (I know that I did a lot of praying, but I think it was to God, I can't remember.) My mom brings that miracle up to me whenever we argue about praying to the Virgin Mary and the saints. And believe it or not, I know in my heart that a miracle was done, because I was VERY sick with mneumonia or brochitus. (We don't know because neither my old man nor myself wanted to go to the hospital.) However, I remind her that satan does miracles also.

Nevertheless, I continued through my teen years pushed towards godlessness by our well financed school system. However, I continued to stick with God, and didn't pay much attention to the saints or the Virgin Mary. This was due to divination: which is basically trying to make religions work together, Christian religions for me. (This is going on right now. The New World Disorder wants a one world religion. Sounds good, but watchout because there is no place for Jesus Christ in this one world religion, unless you mean the antichrist, and he and his father, satan could kiss my ass!) Anyway, not to get off on a tangent, I hung out with the least clicish people in high school, the rednecks, "country bufkins" and motley group of misfit troublemakers. It is with these people that I could relate with. We got in trouble together, partied good and formed a club called the "School Haters of America" SHA. (You see even back then I realized that our school system was "full of crap". Most of the other groups were bent on materialism and hypocritical behavior. Hypocritical behavior- that's basically, lying about your deeds, e.g. you party and drink on the weekends and go to church on Sunday and say you don't drink or party. (It helps if you drink/smoke so much that you don't remember your deeds. This happens all the time. Good people of the community do this all the time.) On the otherhand, we were more than happy to let everyone know the TRUTH, that we were a bunch of party animals.

Hence with this motley group, I noticed that some of the rednecks and country bufkins were religious in Jesus Christ. These are the guys I would keep in touch with throughout my life, despite the distances. They didn't know much about the Greek Orthodox faith, but one thing they did know was parts of the Gospel. For instance they knew Jesus was the door to God and nothing else. They didn't know about the saints or the Virgin Mary, other than she was Jesus Christ's mother. These people were a simpler group of people that I really felt the Lord in. Some were very big hell raisers and not big on religion. But many were, and they were an example to me. Nevermind all the beer drinking and pot smoking that we did. For you see the devil is in the details, but never forget the true importance in life, God through Jesus. Jesus Christ says it in Mathew 22:39-40 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." The rednecks had a problem with the latter part of what Jesus said. I think they thought "white" neighbor.

Anyway, I went through college and continued going to the Greek Orthodox Church in Daytona, but I confess to you that I hated going there. The people gossiped about each other with a hatred that I just couldn't understand. Materialism and clics definately ruled them. I even married a Greek Orthodox girl, the "Greek Girl" next door. I must have dated and hung out with 12 non Greek girls before I started dating my "Greek Girl" who lived down the road a mile. Our families had known each other since we moved to Daytona in 1979 when I was twelve years old. My parents wanted me to only date Greek girls, but I told them that the Greek girls in Daytona were real screwed up on materialism, except for the"Greek Girl" next door. My mom cursed me, she said "I would rather you marry a Greek Girl and eventually end up with a divorce than to marry an Non Greek girl and live happily ever after. She has denied now that her wish has come true 100%. Anyway, I felt it very strongly that the Lord wanted me to marry her if I was to marry at all during the 1990s, but he also made it clear that I wouldn't be with her forever. The Lord gave me dreams and premonitions about that. Anyway, I was tired of being single and partying with crazy girls. I dated her for two years and after a big fight between my parents and her mom, and our breakup, we got together and then married. I brought her to Tallahassee where we lived and raised two beautiful boys.

In the late 1990's I lost my booty in business due to my ambitions, and in 2000 I lost $125,000 in the stock market. Then I went and competed in Battlebots, but lost over a stupid error and that was the end of every ambition I pretty much had. For you see, I knew that my ambitions and money kept me from God. Now God did warn me with preminitions and dreams to lessen the pain. Thank you Lord for your mercy. He didn't have to do that, but that's His love and mercy.

Also in 2000 I met a friend that reminded of the "country bufkin" friends I had in high school, whom I still saw in Daytona or Tallahasse when they visited. My friend, whom I call "Apostle J" knew the Bible better than anyone, I had ever met. Unlike the Greek Orthodox and most Christians out there who are lessening the importance of the Bible everyday, this man lived by it. He had an energy about him much like my country and redneck friends did. A simple energy of Jesus Christ. The energy was the Holy Spirit. Anyway, we quickly became friends. You see I've always kept up with one section of the Bible, regardless whether I was Greek Orthodox or now a non denominational Christian. That is revelations, it put the "FEAR of GOD" in me ever since I was a youngster. I didn't care what the New World Disorder taught in school, Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and all the hatred of Christianity and Jesus Christ. I've always had the "FEAR of GOD", and when I saw people during my teen years just acting crazy, I thought of "Sodom and Gamorah", and how I wanted no part in it. Another thing I marvelled about the country people was that they could say the "Word of God" and never really get yelled at by anyone as other non Jesus emphasising Christians seemed to experience. Apostle J talked to me about the endtimes, I confess my favorite subject because of my "FEAR of GOD". I was in the process of moving to the woods and live there until the endtimes, but my wife, well exwife now, wanted to live in the suburbs. Apostle J appeased me when he proved to me that there was going to be a rapture. (click me to know more.) (This is a term I first heard of about in the late 1990's.) What's weird is that I heard it from my wife who seemed to know a little about it- that's why she wasn't worried about the endtimes. Anyway, Apostle J asked me if I had ever taken Jesus as my personal savior by praying Him into my heart. I said I believe in Jesus but wasn't sure. You see, I didn't understand Jesus Christ and why exactly he had to die for our sins. (Click me to find out more about salvation.) Apostle J showed me in the Bible that Jesus is God in the flesh, which I believed. He also showed me why only through Jesus Christ do we go to God. Needless to say, I took Jesus into my heart in 2000. It felt good. It wasn't until March 2002 that I felt the baptism of the Holy Spirit. (I woke up that morning to go fishing, and didn't want to go because my friend couldn't make it and I had been partying all night. However, the Holy Spirit filled me with energy to go fishing. At Lake Talquin, I fished until 11 am, and then I blessed the Lord for it's beauty and that's when I filled up with the Holy Spirit. I felt better than I've ever felt in my entire life. I went to the marina and all the waitresses thought I was stoned, but I wasn't. I was stoned with the Holy Spirit and it stayed with me until 10pm that night when I was listening to rock music. When heavy metal rock came on, the spirit warned me, but I didn't listen and about when the second song came on, one of Metallica's older songs, (No I don't hate Metallica, I've always liked their music, but just listen to the lyrics and tell me they ain't satanic.) which was very satanic, the Holy Spirit ditched me. In spring 2004, overnight I quit rock music after 30 years of listening to it and went to classical, e.g. Vivaldi, Beethoven, Bach, etc. I didn't just quit and go cold turkey, it was as though it was a natural move-that's Jesus.) I started to read more of the Bible than Revelations, and noticed that nowhere, I'll say again, NOWHERE does it say in the Bible to pray to the Virgin Mary, nor to saints. For the Apostle Paul we can thank for bringing the Word of God to the gentiles by the grace of Jesus Christ. For he said: "For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus..." 1 Timothy 2:5 Hence when you pray to the Virgin Mary or a Saint or even the pope to act on your behalf to God, you are saying that this verse is a lie and that the Apostle Paul is a liar. Thus you are invalidating the Christian religion because the Apostle Paul is the one that converted us all to Christians. Don't take my word for it here's the ancient Greek text of the original writing (in orange): eis gar Qeos, eis kai mesiths Qeou kai anqrwpwn, anqrwpos cristos ihsous, Here's the word for word translation: there's one God, there's and a mediator God's and man's, man Christ Jesus.(Remember, this is word for word.)
Now my mom always acted like I would go to hell if I didn't. Now if God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, tells us what to do to get to heaven, why did He leave out praying to Mary and the saints? Because that is satan's "BULLSHIT". I tried to explain that to my wife. At first she listened confused, but you see her mother is her Jesus. Therefore she stuck with the Greek Orthodox tenets. She said she was born a Greek Orthodox and will die a Greek Orthodox. I said if you were born a muslim that's also what you would say and would be doomed. She said no. Anyway to make a long story short, in addition to her always siding with her family, that was the final nail in the coffin to our marriage. She made me choose between my family vs. not believing in the saints and Virgin Mary, despite agreeing to still go to the Greek Orthodox Church. Jesus won that one. And so after some drama, she went back to Daytona with the kids.

When visiting my kids in Daytona, my parents wanted to see them. I had cut off my parents to keep my marriage together, but didn't have that worry anymore. I got back together with my parents, but I would argue with my mom over the saints and the virgin mary. I still do. I find that a lot of women pray to the virgin Mary while the non Christian women pray to goddesses, Wicca. And a lot of the women that pray to goddesses used to be Catholic and prayed to the Virgin Mary. It just seems like the Virgin Mary is a link straight out of Christianity and into paganism. And womens rights have made women even more biased away from God, the male, and towards a female goddess. What a surprise. It should not be a surpise because the picture of the Virgin Mary and Jesus as a baby goes back to Egypt, thousands of years before Christianity, where the sun god is pictured the same way with his mother. You see that's where this praying to the Virgin Mary comes from. "It's PAGAN, not Christian."

In conclusion, the Lord Jesus Christ said the following: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) Nothing said about Mary. "For Whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in his own glory, and in His Father’s, and of the holy angels." Luk 9:26 Furthermore, Jesus Christ had a great opportunity to tell people to worship/pray to his mother, you see his mother, brothers and sisters were waiting for Him outside a building that he was preaching in. Do you know what His response was? "For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother." Mar 3:35 A huh! Jesus Christ doesn't even acknowledge His mother to the crowd. But that don't make any sense if you tout praying or worshipping the Virgin Mary? Jesus is telling us what it takes to get to heaven and he doesn't even aknowledge His mother to us, let alone tell us to pray to her. However, Jesus tells us to watch out for false gospels and finally, and most importantly Jesus makes it clear "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved... John 10:9 If you are serious about where you want to spend eternity, you better get with the program and see right through satan's bullshit!