Thou Art Truly a Son of God

Steve Nixon

I was raised not believing there was a God, but also not believing there wasn’t.

My exposure to the things of God began years prior to ‘church-going’. It started when there became so many supernatural events in my life in which I was amazingly protected or had been shown obvious care, that I finally had to concede that, yes, there really is a God. Logic would then demand that since there really is a God, as many people had said, then it stands to reason that both heaven and hell were real as well. At that point there is only one right-thinking conclusion; seek God. I was extremely fortunate to be born in America, whose religion was by far predominately Christian, so the God that I wanted to find out about was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The God of Israel.

My first church, like so many people, was a Baptist church. There I felt drawn to the altar, dedicated my life to the Lord and asked Him to be my saviour. At that time I was forgiven for my sins and baptized.

The experience of cleansing was a great experience and I was told that I was now saved and ‘born again’. But in time I began to feel like something was wrong and reading the bible caused me to wonder if I was really ‘saved’ or not. I sure didn’t manifest a lot of the things, inwardly or outwardly, that the bible spoke of. My wonder turned into worry, and worry after a while gave feelings bordering despair. Bringing up my wonderings to others resulted in them showing me ‘certain’ scriptures that, when separated from other scriptures validated my salvation. Such validation did not stop my inner feeling of something just not being right. I was missing something. But what?

As my worry grew, I went to bed one night and had a vision. Visions often occur during sleep, but visions are different than dreams. (That’s a whole different subject). In my vision an angel came near to me while was sleeping and in a very soft voice just above a whisper said, “Thou art truly a son of God”. Then the angel said again, a little bit louder, “Thou art truly a son of God” and then a third time a little louder still, “Thou art truly a son of God.” I had a sense of peace because of that vision, and worry over the matter subsided. Although I no longer worried, after a while I began to wonder at the angel’s words. ‘A son of God?’ Not a child of God, but a son. I was still fairly new to my exposure to the bible but, wasn’t there only one son of God? Isn’t that Jesus? I did not doubt at all the vision I had; I knew what I saw and heard in that vision and the peace I felt afterwards. But I didn’t understand how I, or anyone, could be called a son of God. For 40 years I never told anyone of that vision. It all makes sense now, and because it makes sense now I wonder why I didn’t understand all along (I guess that’s normal).

Several years later found me very busy. We had moved from the city and I was commuting many miles to and from work and raising a family. During this time I was less focused on spiritual things and after a while that feeling of ‘missing something in my life’ returned. I began to yearn for a closeness to God; and yearning became a hunger.
At that time, the Lord directed my steps to a local church where they preached against sin, worldliness and wrong attitudes. They preached a total commitment to the obedience God and God’s Word. Anytime I walked into that church, I could feel this awesome awareness of God’s presence as if electricity was in the air. I would go there and tremble.
God’s spirit was there, and it was powerful. Not many visits later found me back at the altar again, getting baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and for the first time in my life receiving the baptism of the Holy Ghost. At that baptism I spoke in a language I did not know, and did not understand. I remembered that utterance though, and through curiosity and research I learned later that what I spoke was Hebrew and what was said was, “behold, salvation!” It was at this second baptism, that I learned the vast difference between ‘being cleansed through the forgiveness of sin’ (which many mistake for ‘being born again’) and the true born again experience of receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. There were very dramatic changes in my life because of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost and a new awareness of the reality of God and the seriousness of His Word. Things pertaining to God and His kingdom became a living reality and physical reality seemed to suddenly be far less real or important. Now I had received the true born again experience and even it’s manifested signs that I had read about in the bible but never had.

Having this new life now, after several months, I began to wonder about my vision that had taken place years earlier; “Thou art truly a son of God.” I knew that this new experience was the true new birth, and never doubted it for a moment. So how could an angel tell me what I heard in the vision? I knew the vision was true also. I had no answers. But every few years I would think of it again and wonder, “how can both of these be true?” Just within the last few days I learned the answer to my inner questionings… 40 years after the vision.

In order to understand some of the sayings in the bible, I’m beginning to study some of Jewish culture. It’s very interesting like; “my yoke is easy” (what is ‘yoke’ actually referring to) and ‘wipe the dust off your feet’ (is that an insult? I don’t think Jesus would want to us insult people… so what does that mean?). There are many things in scripture that we would far better understand if we look to the culture of the nation that the scriptures were given to. (To the Jew first, and then to the Greek [gentiles] Rom 1:16, Rom 2:9-10). I’ve learned that rabbi’s traveled the countryside, going from town to town. They would teach in homes, under shade trees, on the shore of the sea of Galilee or anywhere they found room They were sustained by the hospitality of the locals. Those that learned from these teachers had a difficult life, for in order for them to learn, they had to follow the rabbi as he traveled, and that meant leaving their homes and means of income, at least for the time at hand. These disciples (those following) were called ‘sons’. If you followed a Rabbi in such a committed way then you were a ‘son’ of that Rabbi. Perhaps because you would be the ‘offspring’ of his teaching (but I don’t know that). My vision, I’m sure which was meant to give me some inner peace, was acknowledging that I was a disciple, a student, a true seeker while at the same time not verifying whether or not I was really a ‘born-again’ Christian. Which I wasn’t, at least not at that time. There is a difference, between a ‘believer’ and a ‘receiver’. InActs 19:1-6, the apostle Paul came upon a group of believers and asked them, “Have you receive the Holy Ghost since you have believed?” And they said no, and that they’d never heard of it. Then he laid hands on them and they received this same baptism that I did. I cannot help but believe in my heart that if a person is serious about their commitment to God, if they have a yearning and open heart instead of a skeptical and closed mind, if they seek Him with all of their being then they will find Him in this same manner.