There Really Is None Else

“Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” (Isa 45:22 AV)

Years ago, this poor sinner discovered this truth.  There really is none else.  It was the spring of 1978.  I was fourteen years old.  My mother had come home from a weekend trip with some friends of hers that was centered on a religious theme.  We were sitting at the dinner table and she announced that she had prayed and given all her children to the Holy Spirit.  As a fourteen-year-old young man, that didn’t sit very well with me.  I wondered where my choice was in all this.  How dare my mother make a religious commitment for me without even consulting me.  What if I didn’t want to be ‘given’ to the Holy Spirit?  What right did she have committing my soul to a God whom I may not even want?  I remember being so mad that immediately following dinner, I went out to the front porch of our house, looking up to heaven, and saying to God, “I don’t want you or need you anymore.”  At that instant, a lightning bolt struck nearby.  It was really close.  My sister Mary and I got on our bicycles and went the next street over.  There, in a direct line to our house, was an old maple tree split in two!  God has spoken, and I knew it!

For the next four years, I desperately tried to find God.  I was raised in a faith that taught a works-based salvation system.  Rededicating myself to those works by striving to learn, God didn’t seem any closer.  He was just as distant as He had always been.  No real peace.  Then, I tried some eastern meditation.  Reading some books on mysticism, I attempted to attain transcendentalism seeking my Nirvana.  All that did was make me more and more depressed.  For two summers, I visited Hill Camorra thinking that perhaps God could be found in one of the newest of sects claiming to be Christian.  Newer is better, right?  Turns out, their system is also works-based.  A brief stint with atheism didn’t pan out wither.  Rationalism is actual more irrational than rational.  Trying to find God in places I knew He was not turned out to be fruitless.  God was not in a church building.  God was not in a religion.  God was not in my own rationalizations.  Looking everywhere I knew to look, He was not there.  Then a miracle happened.

The LORD sent a faithful bible-believer who had the courage to guide me into the passages of the Bible that would reveal the truth of God and where He was.  He was in a personal relationship.  One that began with confrontation of my sin.  The Holy Spirit worked on my heart to see just how wicked I am and the consequences of that sin.  The word of God gloriously revealed that forgiveness of sin and salvation from a devil’s hell was already provided in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross.  All I had to do was to accept that by faith, calling upon Him to save me!  There is none else!  As mankind searches in legislation or government, in science, or in diplomacy, they will come up empty.  There is none else by the LORD Jesus Christ.  There simply is no other!