Pilgrim, Robin, thanks again, both of you, for your responses, and this really helped put it into perspective for me all the more.

Again, I must apologize if some of my terminology has been hit and miss like it has in some of my posts. I will do my best to get the grammar down into a more appropriate context from this point forth when addressing these issues-still a rookie here, unfortunately.

The specific term I used, "Override," that's not the exact thing I meant to say, obviously, but it didn't look right and you were both right to correct me about it.

Thankfully, you were able to determine what I was getting at, but in the event the Lord someday wills a comprehensive understanding of His Word and one might come to try to help out others like all of you have done for me, this would clearly be an issue I would have to address between now and then.

I thank everyone here once again for your willingness to help ever so much. I've said this all along-I took a lot of comfort in the gentleman that referred me here, his heart, who is now a theologian himself among the Reformists.

While I understand the term "Traditional" is a little bit of a dangerous word to use in this area, there is something unique about the Calvinists/Reformists, something different that generally feels right about your approach, certainly w/ the demeanor.

As I continue to make my way out of this "Code red" panic state I fell into for months after having studied the OT in depth for the first time in life, despite the fact I still feel like a rat crawling up out of the sewer at this point for whatever reason, it feels like I'm back into recovery now a little more as the days go by.

I still don't know exactly what happened during this experience, it's very difficult to put into words. I was raised in a traditional Lutheran church and always had a deep love for Christ, but the faith was highly childlike in nature previous to this, despite being a male in my late 20's when I started this two years ago.

If you go back in time, it was about two years ago to this day that I read the book of Matthew for the first time in my life, and there He was, you know-He was everything and anything that you had ever loved from the beginning. Then I went into the Old Testament, and I think it was the shock more than anything because it seems that our congregation did such a remarkably good job at portraying all of this in the best possible way from the standpoint of having avoided every conceivable aspect of the necessary fear. I don't know how I ever made it to this point in life without having understood one element of the fear aspect within the Faith itself, that's inconceivable to me.

I was a college graduate, no mental health history, nothing like that to speak of, but for whatever reason the concept I had of Christ had remained so childlike through the years where you understand now it's almost like you had this all made out to be like a childhood fairy tale story.

Again, it was that overwhelming love for Jesus the Person from the heart itself that I think led to all of this, but such had previously been in line with the type of gentle love a child has for his mother. Thus, when it came to the in depth study of the OT, I went into a state of shock, an out right code red ensued.

I attempted to explain it to my pastor this way-two years ago, it was as if you had finally met the Jesus you had always known and loved and followed after Him into the backdoor of a house like a little kid w/ joyous smiles and laughter all around, etc. A year and a half later, however, you emerge from the front door of the house with your face covered in soot, clothes blown to shreds, this after having accidentally broken through on the gas line down in the basement. For your life, you just can't figure out what happened, how it ever got from point A to point B.

The fear took hold to such an extent that I eventually came to question Jesus, and that had to be the most heartbreaking part of it that you could ever experience so that only added to everything.

Six months ago, I definitively thought that it was all over, I thought for sure I'd be living out the remaining years in a psych ward or something because I just couldn't get it to add up and the stress state had become unbearable.

As the months went by, however, things settled down a little more day by day. Only in recent weeks has it felt like there's been hope again, I think at this point now it's just about letting the head get settled again and letting this digest so I can start living for my Lord the right way through Faith.

All said, I couldn't ever be more thankful for the help from all of you along the way, I couldn't mean that more. You're very nice people here that are dedicated to Christ your Lord, so this was a big gift.

As a final note, I should point out the fact that a good portion of the personal experience was to blame on no one else but myself, for the simple fact I lost hold of my faith during a portion of the struggle.

Though I do certainly believe the Lord requires us to fear and respect Him, it is still the type of fear centered on love itself, perhaps based in large part on His desire to keep us on the right track in this life.

I'm not the only amateur/beginner that's had a certain struggle w/ the OT like this, but He brought me through it, and the Jesus I knew and loved before all of this is still right there-it all turned out in the end.

I am reasonably convinced that I now know what hell itself is like because it couldn't possibly get much worse than what took place over the course of the past year, year and a half, I'm convinced of that-and again, to the extent I fell into that trap, it was only because I lost my grip on maintaining Faith for that brief while in the One we love, I know that to be true.