Forgiveness and peace …                  by Raul A. Ries              Taken from Decision Magazine

I made up my mind to kill my wife, Sharon, and our two children. It was April, 1972, and Sharon and the children were at church.

When I came home from spending the day with my friends, I found suitcases waiting in the hallway, and I went into a rage. I knew that Sharon was going to leave me. The best way to handle it, I was convinced, would be to execute her and the children, then shoot it out with the police. In the end, no one would win.

As a child in Mexico City, Mexico, the last thing that I had wanted to become was an abuser. Throughout my childhood my father abused my mother, my grandmother and me. He was an alcoholic and often forced me to go with him to bars where he got into drunken brawls. By the time I was eight or nine years old, I had so much hatred.

As a teenager I had frequent confrontations with him, and I took my anger out on others. Because of my father’s drinking and abuse, we moved to Los Angeles, California, where the following year, when I was 17, I learned martial arts. By my senior year in high school I had been in and out of jail but was never booked on any charges. Then one night at a party I saw my girlfriend with another guy, I beat the young man almost to death.

I was arrested and given a choice: the military, or jail. This was in 1966 during the Vietnam War. I’ll just go Vietnam, I thought. It’s a license to kill.

After joining the U.S. Marine Corps and going to boot camp, I was sent to Vietnam. I was assigned to a reconnaissance team. We would surround Viet Cong villages and wait for the men to come out of their homes. We would kill all the men, then kill the women and the children. We never took prisoners.

After 10 months in Vietnam, I became overwhelmed by the constant terror of war. I threatened to kill my captain if he sent me out on one more mission. The military shipped me to Oakland Naval Hospital, in Oakland, California, where I was put into a psychiatric program.

In spite of this, I was honorably discharged in 1968. Just before I left the Marines, I married Sharon Farrel, a young woman I had dated in high school and had been writing to during my time in Vietnam. But the violence of Vietnam still haunted me. I went back to studying martial arts and eventually opened by own studio. Now I was more dangerous than ever because Vietnam had removed from me any fear of killing. Throughout this time, Sharon loved me and showed me God’s love by how she lived her life.

It wasn’t long before I was fighting in bars and cheating on Sharon. Before I knew what was happening, I was as abusive to my wife as my father had been to me.

In 1972, after suffering almost four years of abuse, Sharon decided to leave me. She wanted to help me overcome my problems, but now we had two sons. She didn’t want them to grow up to be abusers. She knew that to save them, she had to leave me.

That was the evening that I went home and found the suitcases and realized that Sharon was going to leave me. So I decided that I had to kill her.

I pulled my rifle from the closet and loaded it with 18 rounds. While I waited for my family to come back from church services, I punched holes in the walls, shattered picture frames and knocked over shelves. I wanted to destroy everything.

As I stood in front of the television set, I was seething. I hit the television with the rifle but, but instead of breaking the front of the TV, I hit a button and turned on the TV.

There was a man, a pastor, talking about Jesus and His love. I listened, but it made me angry. The last thing I wanted was to listen to some preacher. I tried to shoot the television, but I couldn’t pull the trigger. I kept listening to the man talk about the love of God. It seemed as if he were speaking directly to me, and I realized that what he said was my last chance and only hope for life.

I began to cry uncontrollably. I knelt and prayed, “God, if You’re real, and if You are a God who is able to save people I want You to come into my life tonight.”

When I stood, I knew that something had happened. Jesus had taken away my anger and hatred, and He had given me His love and peace.

I wiped the tears from my face and put away my rifle. Then I drove to the church to find Sharon and tell her what had happened.

When I arrived, the pastor was giving an alter call. I couldn’t find Sharon, so I went to the altar where someone prayed with me before I drove home.

The lights were already on when I parked in front of our house. As I walked closer to the house, I could hear Sharon crying.

I called out, “Sharon, open the door.”

Sharon had put the chain across the door, but she opened the door a crack and asked, “What do you want?”

“I accepted Jesus Christ,” I told her. She shut the door in my face. She didn’t believe me. I finally convinced here to let me in the house. It took months for her to believe that I had truly changed and to forgive me for the pain that I had caused her.

I began to attend church in Costa Mesa and to read my Bible. In the fall of 1972 I sensed that God was calling me to proclaim the Gospel at my former high school. For two months I visited the school regularly and talked with students. One day, about six months later, I stood on a bench and explained salvation through Jesus Christ. Several hundred students responded. Other schools invited me to speak to their students. Soon I was visiting eight high schools a week.

At the same time, in the evening, I was leading a Bible study at my martial arts studio. I was ordained in 1975. Since then, the Bible study has grown to become a large church that supports several ministries.

God also healed my relationship with Sharon. When I began visiting the schools, she knew that God had truly changed me. In 1976 we had another son.

God forgave me and removed the anger, hatred and bitterness that had been consuming me. Now I have the privilege to reach out to others with God’s message of grace and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

Raul A. Ries served as senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Golden Springs, in Diamond Bar, California.