Roth Sid - Truth Seekers: Ten Amazing People Who Found It!

Truth Seekers

Truth Seekers

Ten Amazing People Who Found It

SID ROTH & MIKE SHREVE

Copyright 2011Sid Roth and Mike Shreve

All rights reserved. This book is protected by the copyright laws of the United States of America. This book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. The use of short quotations or occasional page copying for personal or group study is permitted and encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972, 1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ISV are taken from the International Standard Version Copyright 1996-2008 by the ISV Foundation. All rights reserved internationally. Scripture quotations are taken from the Complete Jewish Bible, copyright 1998 by David H. Stern. Published by Jewish New Testament Publications, Inc. www.messianicjewish.net/jntp. Distributed by Messianic Jewish Resources Intl. www. messianicjewish.net. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version. All emphasis within Scripture quotations is the authors own. Please note that Destiny Images publishing style capitalizes certain pronouns in Scripture that refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and may differ from some publishers styles. Take note that the name satan and related names are not capitalized. We choose not to acknowledge him, even to the point of violating grammatical rules.

DESTINY IMAGE PUBLISHERS, INC.

P.O. Box 310, Shippensburg, PA 17257-0310

Speaking to the Purposes of God for This Generation and for the Generations to Come.

This book and all other Destiny Image, Revival Press, MercyPlace, Fresh Bread, Destiny Image Fiction, and Treasure House books are available at Christian bookstores and distributors worldwide.

For a U.S. bookstore nearest you, call 1-800-722-6774.

For more information on foreign distributors, call 717-532-3040.

Reach us on the Internet: www.destinyimage.com.

ISBN 13 TP: 978-0-7684-3800-0

ISBN 13 Ebook: 978-0-7684-8989-7

ISBN 13 VTE: 978-0-7684-3865-9

For Worldwide Distribution, Printed in the U.S.A.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 / 13 12 11

Dedication

To seekers of truth everywhere

Contents

R ecently, my good friend, Sid Roth, contacted me with a brilliant idea. He asked me to help put a book together highlighting the stories of ten truth seekerswhere they came from, what they experienced on their journey and how they finally arrived at their goal.

I immediately felt a surge of enthusiasm (a word that appropriately means God within). Nothing could be closer to my heart. Even though I prayed about it overnight, I knew what my answer would be the next day, Yes, Id love to. And the project was launched.

Why was I invited to participate? I suppose the big factor was my background. Back in 1970, at the age of 19, I dropped everything college, career hopes, money, relationshipsto search for Ultimate Reality. I left college to study Kundalini Yoga under a guru named Yogi Bhajan. Later I taught that same yogic discipline at four universities and formed a yoga ashram in Tampa, Florida. (You can read my story in Chapter 7.) So yes, Ive been down the road that many truth seekers take and Im familiar with all the twists, turns, hills, bumps, shady spots, bridges and ditches.

Why did I turn to Eastern religions and New Age thought? Probably, because I was disenchanted with traditional Christianity and its predictable rituals and sit-stand-kneel, church bulletin choreography. Furthermore, the exclusiveness bothered me immenselythe towering-church-steeple attitude, My way is the right way and your way is the wrong way. I just couldnt align myself with that anymore. I sincerely felt it was a mindset from the Dark Ages. Breaking out of the preset religious mold seemed to be the only option, and exploring other religions and expressions of spirituality, the logical choice.

Besides, my amazing era witnessed some huge paradigm shifts resulting from brave free thinkerslike Martin Luther King Jr., who launched the Civil Rights Movement, and Mahatma Gandhi, who brought liberation to India through nonviolent means. All You Need is Love was the Beatles-inspired chant of the 1960s and 1970s. A tsunami-sized wave of change was crashing over the nationspowered, not by a divide and conquer attitude, but by a unite and assimilate philosophy. Equality was working politically and socially; it was only logical that this kind of mindset would overflow into realm of religion also.

But can you build some kind of spiritual utopia by branding all views of God and religion as equally legitimate and acceptable? Is that even logical? Is truth so soupy that it will conform to the shape of any bowlor is truth a rock that doesnt change for anything or anyone?

This generation has witnessed remarkable scientific achievements, but how did we arrive at such superior knowledge? Certainly, we didnt get there by accepting every idea as legitimate, but by subjecting concepts and theories to experimentation and analysis, until the actual nature of a thing is discovered with absolute certainty (or close to it). May the best opinion win! Whats wrong with that approach? Is it juvenile to think that way, or egotistical, or harsh, or hateful? No, of course not! Thats the wise and mature way we do science; and the way we should do religion and spirituality as well.

If absolutes can be determined in the natural world (through science), can absolutes be determined in the spiritual world (through deductive reasoning and experiential knowledge)? Of course, they can! In every portion of the universe, from the natural cosmos to the heavenly realms, there is a divine order governed by laws.

Consider for a moment a major controversy during the first millennium A.D. and into the second. The BIG question in many peoples minds concerned the nature of the solar system. Does the sun revolve around the earth or the earth around the sun?

There were respected thinkers on both sides of the table. Ptolemy, a second-century astronomer, taught that the sun revolved around the earth on a backdrop of unmoving stars. Everyone (well, almost everyone) bought into iteven the religious crowd growled heretic! if you dared to believe otherwise. Then about a thousand years later, at the peril of losing his life, Copernicus stirred the coals of controversy, insisting that the solar system was heliocentric (sun-centered). Did he rock the boat or what?

What if these two men had been contemporaries? What if they could have met each other? Would it be even remotely logical for Ptolemy and Copernicus to discuss their views and agree between themselves, Truth is subjective. Copernicus, you have YOUR TRUTH and I, Ptolemy, can have MY TRUTH, and we can both be right simultaneously. Both of us can just CREATE our own reality.