Testimony:
I am Donald McIntyre, a member of Liberty Church since October of 2022.
I was born in Costa Rica and raised in Argentina. These are Catholic countries so I was raised as a Catholic, went to catechism, and through all the rituals such as baptism at birth, first communion, confirmation, etc.
However I was always a non-believer atheist. All my life I have believed in reason and science to discover truth. I always actively sought truth by reading books, scientific articles, and seeking knowledge constantly to see if I could stay at the frontier of knowledge. For me it was just a matter of time and research until man would figure out things.
Since more or less 2016 I have been part of an email group with friends who are scientists and work in the blockchain industry (I work in the blockchain industry). Although I am not a scientist, I am an active member of this group and we discuss all things pertaining to physics, chemistry, biology, history, anthropology, computer science, religion, etc. In a way, we are all searching for truth constantly.
One of the members of the group is the most rigorous in terms of the scientific method, but at the same time he is a very strong Christian. This was a contradiction in my mind as, for me, to be a person who believes in science and reason must mean to reject religion and any notions of “God” or the supernatural. For me all these things were myths.
When the COVID crisis started in 2020 we were very engaged in the group trying to figure out the truth about the virus and its potential consequences. In March of 2020 we were alarmed by the prospects and were aligned with government measures. However, after only a few weeks of doing our research and modeling scenarios we had already realized that it was a cold, that all government measures were useless, that the people who needed protection were only the elderly, that society should remain open, and that everything was an exercise in control and coercion by governments and international agencies. Of course the riots incited at the time and the contradicting orders to politically favored and disfavored groups was especially maddening.
My belief in “the science” and “reason” collapsed. I could now see the collusion between industry, academia, and government. And, the generalized attack on Western Culture.
From then on I became a skeptical person, aware of how we had all been manipulated for so long.
In the meantime, while locked up in my home, in our email group we started to debate why some cultures were more successful than others. For me America has always been the most amazing and successful country in the history of man.
However, our analysis and research did not give us many answers, so I started to dig deeper into the question “Why Is America so successful?”.
I went peeling the layers. Studying American history, its national organization, the constitution, its ancestry, cultural influences, its founding, etc. But, I didn’t find any “secret sauce”.
At some point I realized that underneath the Constitution was common law, and common law was based on the Bible. I had also known from previous historic research that America was largely colonized by protestant Christians escaping religious oppression in the UK and Europe.
So, with the idea that Christianity was the source of this virtue and greatness of America I started to study Christianity. First I studied the life of Jesus from an atheist historic perspective. Then I studied the history of the Church and the structure of the Bible. Then, I studied the life of Peter and Paul. However, I did not find the source or the thing that would make America so different and exceptional. So, at this point I had to start reading the Bible to see if I found anything or any answer.
Because according to “scholars”, I had read that the Book of Mark was the first one written chronologically, I searched and found a video with an English actor who read the Book of Mark in St. Paul’s Cathedral and started listening to it. When I finished listening to it, I started watching a video of the Book of Matthew read by the same actor. This was more or less in August of 2022. I was 54 years old.
I think I was only at the beginning of the video of the Book of Matthew that one day in August of 2022 I said “God?”. I was alone in my apartment. This was the moment I was born again as I had finally found truth.
Hence, I can confirm that John 3:3 is true:
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
