The LIGHT Comes Ministries, Inc
Minister Charles Sanders Porter
...out of the darkness!
“God is good and He loves everybody the same ‘cause
He created everybody” Dr. William “Bill” Hines(Officer on the right)
5/21/1927 - 5/21/2014
Dear friend, through the loud angry and hurting cry of Black Lives Matter the LORD God has enabled me to remember my journey from darkness to The LIGHT!
I was born March 16, 1949, to Bernice Marie Carter (hereafter Madear) at Charity Hospital (later renamed Confederate Memorial Medical Center in 1953 and currently named Ochsner LSU Health Shreveport LA). A year after my birth Madear married the man who gave me his name and I call daddy. The truth is I grew up knowing and believing that Willie Porter was my biological father. It was not until we were preparing for his homegoing services in Jan2013 that we came across documentation proving that he was not my biological father. So as of this day I do not know my biological father and the only person who could shed any light into this darkness at that time was Madear who was suffering from dementia. Of course, I asked her about this newly revealed information and she just stared at me...no facial expression, no answer just her stare into my eyes!
Over my then 64 years Willie Porter gave me no reason to doubt or question him as my biological father. He, a man of only a third-grade education stepped in and stepped up to become my stepfather but he is the only daddy that I know. Daddy is who he is and daddy is who he will always be to me. The rule of Madear and daddy in our house was children were to be seen and not heard. It is under their firm and stern household of discipline that I begin to resist them and the LIGHT of life!
Within a few years, our family had grown to include my 3 brothers (our sister Regina was born in 1963. Daddy had a daughter Helen who has always been dear to me.). In early spring 1955, we moved from our home across the Red River in Bossier City to the growing and promising black community of Cooper Road in north Shreveport. Later that summer in August Emmit Till was lynched. The news did not travel as fast so I don’t think we felt the full blow of the tragedy coming from our neighboring state of Mississippi. Cooper Road was on its way to becoming the largest African American community in the USA outside of the community of Watts in LA. We settled into our new home built by daddy's hands. I began to attend the newly built Northside Elementary School. We started to attend Mt Paran Baptist Church where Rev C.L. Pennywell was pastor. This child had entered a new community of existence in a new home, a new school building, a new church with new friends. At that age, I did not realize that it was a separate community from the greater community of our nation and society. As I grew and began to experience the social and economic world outside of my community life I would constantly be reminded that I was different.
During these years me and my brother was molested by a male family relative. Those violations of my body ignited lustful passions of immorality that would torture me for years to come. As I grew to learn the horrible sick wicked lifestyle that we were drawn into only poured gas on my anger, bitterness and confusion. I bought a gun to rid this earth of the person who did this to me and my brother. I knnow now that it was the grace of God that led me tothrow throw that weapon into the Red River. My brother surrendered to the life of homosexuality. He eventually died from AIDS.
I surrendered to immoral sexual relationships with girls trying to prove to myself that I was a boy. I eventually found my way to a pornagraphy group that again the grace of God pulled me from!
...a leap into the dark
I make and offer no excuses for the path of darkness, rebellion, and resistance to the LIGHT of life that I chose! I was a good student who was a developing tenor saxophone player before quitting because I didn’t like the discipline of my music teacher. In 1967 I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Shreveport. My generation existed under the conflicting styles of protests led by Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. We were the first to begin to legally integrate the white institutions of education and workforce.
My high school years were filled with anger, bitterness, and confusion. Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist in Mississippi was assassinated in the driveway of his home in 1963. Later that year in November our president, John F Kennedy was assassinated. Malcolm X had helped to change the words used to refer to African Americans from “Negro” and “colored” to “black” and “Afro-American.” He was assassinated while delivering a lecture in 1965. None of this made any sense to me. The protests of Negroes were mounting as the root days of Jim Crow laws began to blossom in our society. I was not actively encouraged to participate in the growing protests. The rule of our house for me and my brothers and baby sister was “be seen and not heard!” Daddy began to challenge me to start acting like a man. His meaning was for me to get a job and start to earn my own money to make something of my life. My first job outside of the cotton fields was a dishwasher at a riverfront restaurant in Shreveport. During the summer I along with my community friends had been working in the cotton and corn fields on Scopena Plantation in Bossier City and Taylortown LA. Our white field bosses did not even acknowledge us as human. They did not even give me the dignity to call me by the name Madear had given me. A few incidents lead to arguments and fights. I was an angry, confused, and tortured soul reeling from the insulting pain of not understanding why we were treated differently because of our skin color of which neither me nor they had any choice in.
...a light for life
I grew up at home under the teaching of the Bible. During those early days I don't remember hearing Jesus loved me and died for me and my sins as the pride of my heart was developing to fuel my bitterness and anger. The Bible was preached and taught at Mt Paran by Rev. Pennywell. My sinful arrogant pride and confusion did not allow me to hear the truth that God is good. My Sunday school superintendent at Mt Paran was Deacon William B Hines. Deacon Hines was also one of the first two black police officers hired in Shreveport. His 1954 employment came 10 years before the Civil Rights Act ended all state and local laws requiring segregation. He was a US Army and Korean War veteran who was hired as a police officer during a time when racism was openly displayed and practiced. He worked under Police Commissioner George W D’Artois who was as racist, corrupt, and ruthless as his renown but infamous friend and fellow police commissioner Bull Connor in Birmingham ALA.
It was this courageous black giant of a man who taught us black boys and girls in Sunday School that “God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.” I could not hear that message. I didn’t wanna hear that message. I was not hearing that message. I was too busy hatin’ and living in my ignorant pride. I was confused by the question: “if God is good then why do white people hate black people? Why do white people hate me?” My heart was burning with hatred against white people treating me differently because of my skin color which I had no control over. I was even beginning to hate being black. The truthful "God is good" message that Deacon Hines was saying was not one my heart and mind was open to hear and receive. At that time prideful ignorance and hate was drowning out that godly message. But it was that message that God continued to whisper to my heart during the days and years that followed... “God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.”
...into the darkness
Away from plantation and restaurant work my first encounter with white people as "equal" was at the Gary Job Corp Center at San Marcos TX. In reality, it was "separate but equal." God allowed the words of “Say it Loud, I’m black and Proud'' by James Brown to hit KOKA Radio AM 1550 airwaves in Summer 1968 just as I was leaving for the Job Corps. I was enrolled as the only black student in a drafting course. I started the class three weeks behind all of the other students who were white. I not only finished on time with them I had the highest grade average in the class. Still my skin color caused the instructors and my fellow students to treat me less than. These people nor I had anything to do with our skin color.
Sitting in classrooms together with whites, competing on the athletic field with and against whites, people with my skin color would always hold our own. Not only did we athletically and academically compete in many cases we excelled past those who were oppressing us! Thier oppressions were not limited to raping our sisters and mommas and lynching our daddys' and brothers. They did not want us working on their jobs, learning in their schools nor living in their nice homes and neighborhoods. After a basketball game on April 4, 1968, my Job Corp team was riding the bus back to our dorms. We learned over the radio that Dr. King the advocate of nonviolent protests had been assassinated. My confusion, pride, anger and hurt only mushroomed.
The way we as African Americans were treated was sanctioned by the post-Civil War era Jim Crow laws until 1968. Though unlawful after 1968 Jim Crow Law behavior was practiced effectively to marginalized African Americans by denying us the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education or other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws were often arrested then fined and/or faced jail sentences, violence, and death
On the night of Dr. King’s murder lying in bed with my eyes filled with tears; my heart burning with pride and hate I remember the conflict in my heart and mind as that message came to mind...“God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.” God brought me through the Job Corp to use my drafting certificate to give me a really good job. I was hired as the only black tool and die apprentice at the new Western Electric plant in Shreveport. Three other newly hired white apprentices started on the floor learning their craft in the apprentice shop. I was assigned to the basement to do manual labor. It took six weeks before I was "freed" to begin learning my assigned tool and die craft in the apprentice shop. I can’t begin to tell you the anger, hatred, and bitterness that I came into the apprentice shop with. When finally there in the shop I found very little support from my white co-workers and mentors! It was during this time I started to drink and smoke pot. The tensions of my life was growing darkening and thickening.
...deeper into the darkness
As an apprentice in the WE Tool and Die program I earned good money for a N%##*R. I could support my life of darkness and sin. I was single, employed, a social drinker of alcohol, smoked dope, and dived heavily into immorality and the darkness of the fast lane of death. I eventually quit my good job to join some very musically talented friends in a night club band as a bass player. I leaped further into the dark having never before in my life even held a bass guitar. There was great pleasure in that existence because it afforded me self gratification in drink, dope, and women. I was bitter, angry, empty, insecure, and lonely yet too ignorant and proud to let anybody know. My ignorance and pride kept me engaged until out of frustration I joined the US Army. My Army job allowed me the time and freedom to play bass guitar for bands in the nightclubs of Europe where I was stationed. Far away from Shreveport, I always was a church member and occasionally read the Bible. I begin to learn that I was cloaked in spiritual darkness. I was angry, hurting, and confused on the inside. The hatred worked itself out in the arrogant pride of my selfish behavior toward others!
In 1975 after 3 years of military service I returned to the states and brief musical adventures in Shreveport and Dallas, and Houston, TX. On March 6, 1979, I drove into Atlanta Ga where I came together with a group of talented musicians, singers, to form a concert band. We thought our band had great potential for musical sucess. It never materialized and in the summer of 1982 found myself in the streets of Atlanta. I’d lost everything, prestige, girlfriend, car, and apartment! So when I say in the streets of Atlanta what I’m saying is that ...I was homeless!. I remember several times calling Madear back home in Shreveport, only to hear her say “the Lord don’t want you playing that honky-tonk mu…” before she could say “music” I would hang the phone up. In the midst of utter failure... “that message” God would whisper to my heart! “God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.”
...the marvelous light of Jesus
One day in September 1982 out of sheer devastation and continuing frustration I walked the streets of Atlanta to literally stumble upon Carver Bible Institute and College (currently Carver College) in Atlanta. That event coupled with me being hired as a laborer by a local pastor led me back to the God who is good! That loving pastor Rev. Walter Johnson told me YES, God does love everybody the same because He created everybody. He went on to make it personal to me… God through His Son Jesus loved ME caused He created ME! To this man who was in a deep dark emotional mess of hate, arrogant pride the God of the Bible enabled me to see His LIGHT! He rescued me with that message of truth… God is good because He created me in His very own image and likeness and He loves me!
In January 1983 I enrolled in the college Bible program at Carver Bible Institute and College I was sitting amongst men called to preach and pastor and women called to Christian service. I sensed no call to preach, pastor nor Christian service. Sometime later God the Father and my Creator helped me to see that He called out of darkness into His Light because I needed to know how to live! Carver Institute and College enabled me to learn to live from the instructions of the Author and Giver of life. I was faithful in classwork and study. The grace of God began to slowly but surely draw me into His marvelous LIght to unveil the unsearchable riches in His Son Jesus Christ. I remember accepting Jesus as my Savior from sin and being baptisted in my early teen years at Mt Paran. I dedicated my life to Jesus Christ as not only my Savior but my LORD as I totally surrendered my life to Him and His will for me!
...the dark mythical curse of Ham
A primary source of my anger, confusion, and hate had to do with white men who saw and treated me as one less than human and their affinity to Sunday gatherings to read and preach the same Bible that I was being taught. I did not know at that time but the true and good God of the Bible revealed in His time the myth of the curse of Ham. The myth is a false interpretation and teaching of Gen9:24-25. The myth enabled white men to believe and teach negroes that we were biblically destined to be their servants. Most early black preachers were taught, coerced, and manipulated to accept the myth as Bible truth. The same Bible that I grew up being taught was the Word of God and was currently being taught at Carver was being at used to sanction slavery and white supremacy over negroes. The amalgamating of a biblical untruth with legal segregation and white supremacy only resulted in a bias and prejudice disposition of blacks in their psyche of the church in America. How could this happen in a church where the Bible is supposed to be the standard for thinking and behavior. Why was all of this going on? Because there is a behind the scenes enemy working against all of humanity... Satan! Satan used the sinful behavior of ignorant men who are made in the image of God to strike against the God of the Bible.
Through personal study and teaching of the Bible, I have grown to understand that the existence of this life is a spiritual war. A war between good and evil. A war between darkness and light! A war between Satan and God! The war is unfair because Satan can only work in the dark. Jesus The LIGHT of the world has destroyed the works of the devil (1John3:8).
The Bible is God's written words of love to all humanity that we might know Him. The Bible does teach that all of humanity is created by God and in His image and His likeness. In the image of God He created humans (Gen1:26-27) God unconditionally loves each and every human being that He creates. In this current climate of Black Live Matter, I say to you yes Black Life Matters because ALL LIFE MATTERS. Satan continues as the behind the scenes enemy working to distort the words of the Sovereign, Living, Holy God of the Bible. Probably the most visibly public and well known Bible verse is John 3:16. Maybe you can remember having seen John3:16 written on a sign or banner at a sporting event, college or professional. Maybe you saw the sign John3:16 at a political event, democrat and/or republican. The Bible verse begins “For God so loved the world (the human race)...” Satan is using the sinful behavior of ignorant and hard-hearted people who hold the Bible, yet they suppress that wonderful truth. The Bible is God's written words of love to all human beings that we might know Him. God loves black lives. God loves brown, red, yellow, and white lives. God loves ALL LIVES! God loves all human LIFE! All of human lives He created in His image and His likeness. God also loves the lives of those who function in His ordained governmental and police authority (Rom13:1-7). In our society, all lives do not have to contend that their image of God bearing life matters in the hands of those also created in the image of God and assigned as protectors of all lives created in the image of God.
...the light of equality
Neither should black lives... God so loves ALL LIVES that He gave His only Son (for all lives) that whoever (any life) believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life John3:16 ala Charles version
Today, I am alive and free to prayerfully protest righteously and proclaim the truth of God to and for all image bearers of God! I weep with those who are weeping the sad tragic loss and bias treatment of their family members and loved ones because of human violence... that is: image bearers of God inflicting violence against and/or upon another image bearer of God. Too many of those lives have been lost because of crime and violence within the African American Community. This crime and violence is still: image bearers of God inflicting violence against and/or upon another image bearer of God. However in this land of the free many lives of African American men, women, boys and girls have been beaten, sexually abused, tortured, lynched, mutilated, castrated, and murdered for 400+ years by the hateful hearts and heavy hands of the dominant race which held the distinct advantage of education and resources... that is still: image bearers of God inflicting violence against and/or upon another image bearer of God. They think themselves superior human beings. Worser still is their abuse and distortion of the Word of Life coupled with biased and unjust laws are used to control and keep blacks in subservient roles. This lie in the hand of Satan makes it virtually impossible for us to realize and experience the truth and integrity of the Declaration of Independence: “...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The January 21, 1865 passage and December 6, 1865 ratification of the 13th Amendment abolished outright slavery in the United States. Only to bring on a new and further devious ploy for enslaving the negro. The 13th Amendment proclaims: “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Crime Historian Gary Potter offers; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves. One could argue that this “exception” clause of the 13th Amendment is the freeway driven to disproportionate clashes between police and black men. These clashes all to often end in death of black citizens or unfair trials and convictions that have led to many jailings of innocent black people by stacked evidence and rigged courts. These convictions scar a black man for life in this the land of the free. The tragic and senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers seems to have emotionally affected this land of the free and the world.
...light for all
The world… God so loved "the world! That is, God loves me, you, and every other person that He created in His image... He loves us so much that He gave His only Son in death. The death of Jesus is purposeful and targeted for me, you, and yes, the world of image bearers of God! Why does God use the abstract yet all-inclusive word “world” as he relates to humanity? God looks on the real person that He created. He does not see the world of human beings in the skin color that He has given to each individual. He views the motives and intents of the heart of the human being the He created in His image. God looks past our outward appearance into the very existence and depth of heart to interact with His image bearers as males and females created in His image. While the outer skin color of humans may differ. The heart of humanity is the same. The heart of each and every person is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked! Each and every image bearer of God existing in humanity sins and falls short of the holy standard of God.
Mr. Floyd has been buried, one day he will be raised either to everlasting life in heaven or unending torture of further death in hell. That choice Mr. Floyd had to make prior to his last breath on May 25, 2020 under the knee of the image of God bearing police officer. Everlasting life or unending torture of death is your choice as you read this. Life or Death for you can only be determined before your last breath in this life. Jesus has been raised and He is ALIVE and the One coming back to gather believers of the good God of the Bible unto Himself.
Until Jesus comes, allow me to encourage believers to keep on looking to the good God of the Bible in prayer, teaching the whole of His truth, protesting and working to change unjust laws for the betterment of all people who are equally created in the image of a good and loving God.
To those of you who have not trusted Jesus. I know your anger, hurt, and confusion. Yes, I do understand. You like me exist in a world that is angry, confused and hurting because we are in the midst of a dark world of sin. The payment for sin is death (Rom6:23a). But God is offering you light in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the madness, in the midst of the hurt, in the midst of the confusion.... in any emotional, economic and/or social situation that you may sit in this moment The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom6:23b). John12:46 I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
...into the light
The LORD God Almighty has brought me through the darkness of arrogance, ignorance, pride, anger, confusion, and hurt of my own heart. Through the racism and cotton fields to earn a master's degree in Christian Studies all the while suffering the indignity of not being realized as a human being who is created in the image of God. Yet it was “that message: “God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.” God persisted in His message of truth to eventually pierce the darkness of my biased prideful, hateful, confused, and hurting soul with The LIGHT of His truth to set me free in Jesus! The Father in heaven has redeemed me from my sin of unbelief and pFersonal sins of immorality, arrogance, pride, and ignorance to give me a personal relationship with His dear Son Jesus Christ.
Today I am a widower with three grown children… Charmaine Patrice, Sarah Noel, and Charles Samuel who fear God and walk in His LIGHT. I retired from my vocational work in June 2019. I serve as an adjunct professor of the Bible at Carver College. I am continuing to grow and walk in The LIGHT of Jesus Christ my redeemer as a member since 1986 of Atlanta Bible Baptist Church pastor, Rev Ray P. Smith. Dr. John McNeal Jr., is pastor Emeritus and my mentor.
“God is good and He loves everybody the same cause He created everybody.”
God is good and He loves YOU cause He created YOU!
Thy Word Oh God is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path...Rom3:23; John3:19; Heb11:25; Jer17:9; Prov14:12 2Thess3:10 Prov20:1, Isa5:11; Prov5:7-10; Prov17; Gen3:22-24, Dan4:28-33; Lk15:1-24; Eph2:4-5, 8-9; Eph2:8; Gal2:20; 1Pet2:9; John10:10; John1:4 8:12; 2Tim1:10