A Wounded Soldier In GOD's Army

An Autobiography by William Joseph Swoffer

Chapter Two - Student of All Things

When I was in the fourth grade I was invited to go to church with a friend (I will refer to this friend as C. for future reference). I was picked up on a Sunday morning by a bus, rode to a church in town, CSBC, also an Independent Fundamental Baptist Denomination Church like the one I was already visiting occasionally. I went in and quickly used the restroom. Afterwards I could not find my friend C. so I just found a seat on the back pew of the main auditorium. A nice older gentleman sat next to me, a towering giant of a man, he shook my tiny hand with his huge mitt. He asked if it was my first time there, I said "Yes sir." After introductions he said to just follow what he did and I will do just fine. (I will refer to this gentleman as Mr. J. for future reference). So I copied Mr. J. through the entire service, stood to sing when he stood, sat when he sat, bowed my head when he bowed his head. I had never been in an adult service before, just Vacation Bible School and Children's Sunday School stuff. It was amazing, I can't recall the topic or the verses, all I remember is that GOD grabbed my heart and my soul that day and I knew that I needed to know more.

I began to attend faithfully, every Sunday morning, both Sunday School and Morning Service, every Sunday Evening Service, every Wednesday Bible Study, in fact I was there every time there was special services even on off days. I was the only bus kid there that was as faithful in their attendance as the children of the Pastor, Decons and Church Workers. To this day I believe GOD blessed my presence at that church because not only was it a blessing to me but it was an encouragement to their bus ministry to see a child so dedicated to going to their church and inviting so many others that their bus ministry grew.

When I became a teenager that fire for GOD just kept on growing. I fully dedicated my life publicly at a Youth Rally. I felt like GOD was calling me to the ministry as an Evangelist. So I began my studies. I could not wait until college to learn about the scriptures. Not only did the Pastor (I will refer to him as Pastor M.) begin to teach me but there were several of the church elders that took me under their wing. Even though I was just leaving Junior High School, here I was with the elders of the church learning College level Seminary class topics, and passing them with top scores. By High School my mother learned that punishment for me wasn't taking away television or video games, it was no church.

I ended up becoming the only bus kid invited to be in the Preacher Boys Club where Pastor M. would teach several of us boys how to be a preacher. I was a top competitor on our Youth Groups Bible Quiz Team for our Youth Rallies. I even received the honor of being able to preach in front of the entire church congregation during our Teens Run The Service Night. However, of all these things that I accomplished as a teenager, my fondest memory would have to be the challenges the we would receive from Mr. J.. He would randomly approach us teens and give us some Bible challenge like look up a verse and tell him what we think it means, or research a certain person or place in the Bible. One day he approached just us Preacher Boys with his hardest challenge, he said we should start at Genesis and put together a biblical timeline based on the verses throughout the Bible. Write it out, do the math then bring him what we come up with when we are finished. Keep in mind that this was before the wonderful convenience of the Internet. So it would all had to be done by actually reading and by hand writing the information and actually doing the math.

A couple of months later I had completed Mr. J.'s challenge and handed him a spiral notebook on a Sunday morning. He looked at me and asked "What's this?" I told him it was what he asked for, a biblical timeline from Genesis to the present. I even matched up historical events that perfectly lined up and matched up our current time line to it just for fun. He opened it up, took a minute to look at my work, smiled down at me (he was a very big man), placed one of his huge hands on my shoulder and said, "Mr. Swoffer," starting that day he no longer called me by my first name but referred to me as an adult and with respect, "in all my years, and of all the teenagers I have proposed this challenge to, you have been the first to ever actually complete this challenge." To my knowledge I was the only one out of our group to do it, the others, when I asked them, said it was too hard.

It had reached a point that when I wasn't in school or hanging out with my friends I was studying. I was even allowed inside the church when they were closed to have access to the Pastor and Youth Pastor's libraries. I should also mention that at this time I had not yet been diagnosed with my mental disorders of OCD or Bipolar. So my obsession with learning as much as I can about the subject of GOD was not fully understood nor the reason why I could remember so much so easily about such a complex subject. The best way I have used to describe it is imagine the inside of my brain is like a giant detective's board trying to solve a mystery and each clue has a red string connected to the next piece of information and so on. This causes me to remember a chain of facts when I hear a biblical topic, all of which connect to each other in one way or another.

I want to also mention that this learning situation carried over into all aspects of my life, especially in school. Apparently I have a genius level I.Q. on top of these issues but I think that only is because of how I store information in my brain. I have had issues with openly correcting teachers in class. Once I reached college I found I could not handle staying in a place where I found myself speaking to the class as much as the teacher just explaining their mistakes. My greatest discoveries along the way have been finding what I call the Tridant Paradox Equation, and proof of a Heliovortex Solar System.

Unfortunately, because of the way my brain works, and because of how much I had studied, it became a hindrance to me within the Independent Fundamental Baptist Denomination. Very early on I felt very uncomfortable with the attitude of "their way was the only right way", even when they went out knocking on doors trying to share the gospel, my approach wasn't their approach. Their approach was your basic, *Knock* *Knock* "Hello?" Then ambush them with, "If you were to die right now, are you absolutely positive that you would end up in Heaven?" Personally I find that approach a rather horrible way to try and spread a gospel that is supposed to be about love, with a death threat! My approach was more about getting a conversation started, I would find out what religion or denomination that they believe, then I would politely ask them if they would be willing to have a conversation with me but only after I went home and educated myself about their beliefs. This opened a lot more doors to me than the churches way did. This also began my studies on the other religions and denominations of the world, which of course brought up questions at certain times during Sunday School or Preacher Boys Club in which the answer was always, they are wrong and deceived by the devil and I shouldn't even be studying that stuff.

Soon, thanks to my freedom within the church building, I began to find myself in rooms studying at times in which I just happened to overhear conversations that was definitely not for my ears. But today I see it as GOD putting me in the right places at the right moments to understand the truth about the dark underbelly of the church. To learn how things truly are behind the scenes. I will not share these at this time but not much longer after this Pastor M. left the church. This was also true for their second paster, Pastor H., who was not there for very long. Their third pastor however, I just could not get behind. I will call him Pastor P., however my friend C. was great friends with him.

Not much longer after that I could see where things were headed with that church so my family and I left. At this point I was married to my highschool sweetheart, which Pastor M. originally tried to stop from happening. Funny thing was even though that church knew us, their first question was if she was pregnant. Sad that they would think that of us after all those years of knowing me. Yes, we got married when we were eighteen but for all the right reasons and we didn't have our first child until we were twenty-one. The seed of truth about the church had been sown and GOD was continuing to water it by the way these people were treating us as a whole. However there were a couple of families that did not treat us like that at all.

So on to church number two, back to CBC, the church I had first gone to as a child, the one before my friend C. invited me to his church, and Pastor J. whom I felt like something was off right from the start. Unfortunately it was more of the same, GOD was continuing to point out thing to me by having me conveniently in places to overhear conversations or witness things that I should not have heard nor seen. In fact, at one instance during one of these unexpected moments, Pastor J. looked up and noticed that I just happened to be sitting in the hallway of the church and he just knew I had witnessed the entire encounter that just happened and his face just turned white. He realized I had witnessed a truth I should not know. Shortly after that it was very clear that some of Pastor J.'s closest associates within the church were doing their best to make my family no longer feel welcome there. So my family left.

We decided to try another church, SBC another Independent Fundamental Baptist Church. Still slightly under the spell that they were a good choice for a church. For awhile my family felt comfortable. However at this time my children were now becoming teenagers. My only daughter out of seven kids had a severe problem with shyness so for fun a friend of ours invited her to join her daughter in a just for fun, all natural, children's beauty pageant. She tried it and enjoyed it, in fact she enjoyed it so much she chose to continue do them for several years. Not only did this help her become a social butterfly but she did not become vain, nor did she become some harlot, both of which we were accused of turning our daughter into by our fellow church members. 

The final straw had to do with my daughter's twin brother. Growing up with autism was hard enough for him but add to that the fact that he is also gender fluid. Not because of anything to do with society or media today, he grew up very close to his twin sister. This is his life choice and my wife and I love and support him one hundred percent. The problem came from a certain teacher in the church teaching hate in the Sunday School on people of his life choice and saying that it doesn't matter what they believe in they are going straight to Hell because of their life choice. It took me some time to explain to him the truth about GOD's love for everyone no matter their sin and how everyone is a sinner but GOD still loves them and all it takes to get to Heaven is acknowledging Christ. I'm sorry but you just don't do that to a child, especially one with autism!

At that point I was done with church. A darkness would soon overtake my life but thankfully GOD wasn't done with me.