Deliverance from Darkness

CBN.com "I came to the belief that God wasnt real, He was just like Santa Claus, make believe, and the Bible was a good literary work, but it was not the Word of God. It was just made up of fantasy and fairy tales," David Klempner recalls.

David didnt always feel this way about God. In fact, as a child, he spent long hours studying the ancient Hebrew Scriptures. He was brought up in a strict religious home.

"I was brought up as an Orthodox Jew," he says. "I went to Hebrew school, we kept kosher in the home, and I wore a yarmulke to and from school. I was very religious."

His religious practices made David the target of neighborhood ridicule.

"I was attacked by a group of kids that went to a private parochial school. They saw me from a distance and called me a 'Christ killer' and began to pick up stones and throw them at me."

As the years passed, those dark words"Christ killer"haunted Davids thoughts. As he grew up, his orthodox practices faded away, and in his rebellious teen years, he was drawn to drugs and the occult.

"Once I stopped believing that there was a God, I began to study and dabble into the occult and became rebellious. I got involved in hypnotism, and began to go to cemeteries and try to communicate with the dead," David explains. "After high school, instead of going to college, I moved to Boston and got heavily into drugs, became a drug dealer selling pot, and got involved with speed and LSD. By the time I was 19 years old, I was living on drugs. I was addicted, every day smoking and dropping acid."

Davids daily drug use escalated to a hundred-dollar-a-day habit. In those dark years, David met and married a girl who liked to party as much as he did, but their marriage burned out as quickly as it had begun. When his wife committed suicide, David was left a single father.

He finally kicked the drugs, but was caught up in the transcendental meditation movement. Then he met Ronnie.

"I was madly in love with her, but we had a very unstable life together," David recalls.

He wanted to share his newfound religion with Ronnie.

"When I met Ronnie, of course, that was the first thing I started talking to her about because I believed in a spiritual life and that there were spirits who could govern our lives," he says.

Ronnie began studying "white witchcraft."

"He introduced me to a priest who was involved in the Wicca religion," Ronnie says. "I started to go to the library picking up more books, and before you knew it, I had an altar up.

"If a person said, 'Were really broke, we need some money, were going to be kicked out of our apartment,' I would go home and do a specific ritual that would create for them to inherit, get some money some way. Miraculously, supernaturally, someone would come by and leave money for them. Things actually did happen."

But the dark forces she was dabbling with began to control her life, and her fears drove her to the point of suicide. For years a close relative was praying for Ronnie to become a Christian. She was able to get Ronnie to meet with a pastor.

"When I went into his office, he opened up the Word of God and he started reading out of the book of Ephesians, the sixth chapter: 'We dont fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness.' When he was done reading, I said to him, 'You just read my life story,' Ronnie vividly remembers. "He said, 'Youre right. That is your life story.' He said, 'This is what you need.'"

When Ronnie accepted Christ and her life started to change, David was shocked.

"She said, 'Were sinning in Gods eyes. Were having immoral sex. Im not marrying you because were unequally yoked.' I thought she had totally lost it," David says.

Ronnie soon moved out. And as the months went by, David saw more unbelievable changes in her life.

"She said, 'I no longer drink. I no longer smoke.' She had been smoking three packs of cigarettes for 21 years."

In an effort to find out what happened to Ronnie, he turned to the book that hed discounted as a fantasy so many years ago.

"I got a Gideons Bible," David says, "and I began to read that book three to four hours every day. I had a lot of questions. I still didnt believe in Jesus, but then thats when I called Ronnie and I went to see her. She said, 'Come to my church.'"

David decided to take Ronnie up on her offer. He was the first person to talk to the pastor after the sermon.

"When the service was over, I walked up to him and I asked him if I could talk to him," David explains. "I really went there with the intentions of unmasking Jesus. I was going to cause a scene. Actually, I was going to say, 'You people are deluded.' Instead, I saw how much they loved the Lord. I dropped all of my defenses and said, "If Hes real, I have nothing to lose. Ive tried everything, and nothing has worked.' So I said the sinners prayer. Ive been following the Lord ever since. Ronnie and I got married six months after that. Ive told everybody about the Lord."

Ronnie is ever grateful to the Lord. "Im so thankful that Gods Word is realnot for just yesterday. Hes real for today. Hes real for tomorrow."

David sums it up: "I searched everywhere through religion and through the things that the world had to offer. Theres no amount of money that can buy this peace and contentment and the joy that only God can give us."