How I Became a Cannibal

I was searching for the truth and ended up a Cannibal.

It started with a high-school lunchtime conversation with Jehovah Witnesses. We, along with a handful of other high-school classmates, got into a heated discussion about the “end of the World”.

Now, you won’t hear this from the Jehovah’s Witnesses community - in fact, nowadays they fiercely deny it - but at the time (early in 1974), the Witness organization was actively preaching that the end of the world, Armageddon, was scheduled for 1975.

Of course, all of us non-witnesses thought the whole "end of the world" thing was crazy. But, the Witnesses had their Bibles and could point to verses in scripture that backed up what they said. None of us non-Witnesses could defend our side of the argument like that. So, I went home and grabbed my family’s study Bible - one with notes, commentary, a concordance, and scriptural cross references - and put together a pretty good case that we’d all be around to see the bi-centennial (in 1976).

But, as I scoured the Bible to build my argument against the Jehovah Witnesses, I found a lot of things that had never come up in my Sunday school classes. The more I read, the more impressed I became with this Jesus guy. I mean, we were taught that Jesus died for our sins and all but reading his words:

“…love thy neighbor…”
“…if someone hits you on your right cheek, let him hit you on the other also.”
“…Blessed are the peacemakers, for they are the children of God…”
“…Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel…”
“…Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…”

moved me to a place I’d never been before. I began to study... not the Bible, or the New Testament, or even the Gospels. I studied Jesus’ words; and in my red-lettered edition his actual words were easy to find.

I studied - I mean really studied.. hard and long. What I learned transformed my life… and destroyed my beliefs.