“The providence of God is like Hebrew—it is read backwards.”
John Flavel

When I first walked into Divine Mother’s modest living room as a skeptical college freshman, I believed I was simply accompanying my father to a meditation meeting. I had no idea that decision would alter the course of my life. At the time, I could only see the next step. Over four decades later, I can finally see the path. The Search for Truth was never merely the story of my search for God. It was the story of God’s patient pursuit of me.

Many years after I left the movement and placed my faith in Jesus Christ, Divine Mother died. For those who believed she was God’s final prophet, her death presented an unavoidable question: Who would lead the movement now? One of her closest disciples soon declared herself to be the new Divine Mother.

Although many accepted her claim, the movement quickly changed. The unity that had once held the group together began to fracture. Rivalries surfaced. Loyalties were tested. Arguments replaced harmony. The very community that had claimed to have conquered the ego became consumed by it.

A schism developed.

My father watched it all unfold.

He had sincerely devoted years of his life to this movement because he believed he had found truth. Instead, he found disappointment. Disillusioned by the hypocrisy and petty emotions so openly displayed by the new leadership and its followers, he quietly walked away.

He never returned.

Although he abandoned the movement, he did not embrace Christianity. He still believed that some kind of god existed, but not the God who had revealed Himself through Jesus Christ. By then, our spiritual journeys had taken very different directions. Yet one irony has never been lost on me. During the year we spent together in that movement, my father and I became closer than we had ever been.

We attended meetings together. We discussed spiritual questions together. For the first time in my life, we were searching for life’s deepest questions side by side. Looking back, I believe that relationship itself was a gift from God. The movement that ultimately proved false became the unexpected setting where a father and son learned to know one another in a way they never had before.

When I became a Christian, however, our paths separated once again. I could no longer follow him. But I never stopped loving him. For the remainder of his life, I looked for opportunities to tell him about Jesus Christ. I never argued simply to win a debate. I wanted my father to know the Savior who had rescued me. Sometimes we talked at length. Sometimes he simply listened. Sometimes he politely disagreed.

I prayed that one day he would come to know the same grace that had transformed my life. That opportunity came one final time. After suffering a massive heart attack, my father lay unconscious in a hospital in Honolulu. I was in Los Angeles. Knowing he was nearing the end of his life, I called the hospital. My sister stood beside his bed and gently held the telephone to his ear. From nearly twenty-five hundred miles away, I spoke to my father one last time. I told him that I loved him. I told him that Jesus Christ loved him. I reminded him that salvation is not earned through meditation, enlightenment, good works, or religious devotion. It is the free gift of God’s grace, purchased by Jesus Christ on the cross and received through faith alone.

Then I pleaded with him. If he could somehow still hear my voice, I asked him to place his trust in Jesus Christ. Finally, I prayed. Whether he heard me, I do not know. Whether, in those final moments known only to God, he called upon the name of Christ, I cannot say. That answer belongs to God alone.

I still hope that one day I will embrace my earthly father again—not separated by an ocean and a telephone line, but face to face in the presence of our heavenly Father, where faith has become sight and every tear has been wiped away.

As I reflect upon this entire journey, one truth stands above every other. God never approved of the deception that captured my heart. But He was never absent from it. At the time, I thought I had found truth. Instead, God was using even my mistakes to prepare me for the day I would finally encounter the Truth Himself.

The movement taught me that all religions lead to God. Jesus declared,

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
John 14:6 (ESV)

The movement taught me to look within myself. The gospel taught me to look to Christ.

The movement promised enlightenment. The gospel offered forgiveness.

The movement spoke of becoming one with God. The Bible revealed something far greater—that through Jesus Christ, sinful men and women can be reconciled to a holy God.

Looking back now, I can see that even my years of wandering were not outside God’s sovereign hand. The evil itself was never good. The deception was real. The false teaching was dangerous. Yet God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, overruled it all. He used my father’s search to soften his heart toward spiritual things. He used my own search to strip away my pride and my contempt for God. He used my deepest questions to prepare me to recognize the answers found only in Scripture. What Satan intended to use to keep me from Christ, God transformed into the very road that led me to Him.

If there is one lesson I hope readers take from my story, it is this:

No one is beyond the reach of God’s grace.

No life is too tangled for His redemption.

No sincere search for truth is wasted when it ultimately leads to Jesus Christ.

For many years, I believed I was searching for God. In reality…

He had been searching for me all along.

As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.
Genesis 50:20 (ESV)

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