“If there is a God… I’ll follow. I’ll serve. I’ll give my life to you.”
Vince Revo is a former atheist who, like many, walked away from the faith of his childhood after encountering religious hypocrisy, unanswered questions, and deep personal pain. Raised amid church culture but overwhelmed by contradictions, Vince found atheism to be a more rational, liberating path, at least at first. But what began as a rejection of blind belief slowly unraveled into a deeper crisis of meaning. From new age philosophy to law of attraction, from hedonistic escape to intellectual searching, Vince tried to find something—anything—that could fill the void.
Guest Bio:
Vince Revo is a Canadian filmmaker, podcast host, and bi-vocational pastor with a passion for engaging culture through story and truth. Once a committed atheist who explored Eastern philosophies, New Age spirituality, and humanism, Vince now uses his platform to speak openly about his dramatic return to faith in Jesus Christ. As the founder of the Revo Report and Vince Revo YouTube channels, he creates thought-provoking content that tackles skepticism, faith, and spiritual transformation. With a background in media production and theology, Vince is committed to equipping others to explore life’s biggest questions with honesty, courage, and intellectual integrity.
Resources Mentioned:
Apologists:
William Lane Craig
Ravi Zacharias
Frank Turek
Josh McDowell
Connect with Vince Revo:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@vincerevo/videos
Instagram: Vince Revo on Instagram
Connect with eX-skeptic:
Website: https://exskeptic.org/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/exskeptic
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/exskeptic
Twitter: http://x.com/exskeptic
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@exskeptic
Email info: info@exskeptic.org
Episode Transcript
Vince Revo
00:00 – 00:29
Like, I’d done everything that I thought I could do so that I could please myself, so that I could make myself feel good and just feeling absolutely empty inside and going and asking, okay, God, do you actually exist? Is there a God, you know? Or is this all there is to life? Just doing whatever you want to do, finding every pleasure you can find, and then just feeling empty at the end? And I think that’s when I went into, okay, well, could there be a God?
Jana Harmon
00:36 – 02:16
What would it take for an atheist to become a Christian? Welcome to eX-skeptic, the podcast where we uncover the extraordinary journeys of those who moved from disbelief to faith. I’m your host, Jana Harmon, and here we explore stories of skeptics, seekers and atheists who found themselves embracing belief in God against all odds. If you’ve ever wrestled with life’s biggest questions about God, meaning or truth, or wondered how belief can rise from ashes of doubt, you’ve come to the right place. Each episode, we dive deep into the personal journeys of those who once saw faith as implausible, even impossible. We explore their struggles, their doubts, and the pillars, pivotal moments that reshaped their understanding of reality. Whether you’re a skeptic searching for clarity, a believer looking for deeper understanding, or simply curious, these stories will challenge and inspire you. In today’s episode, we meet Vince Revo, who once left the Christian faith of his family behind, convinced that atheism was the more rational and liberating path. But over time, his atheism left him with more questions than answers and a deeper longing for satisfaction he couldn’t ignore. Open to anything except Christianity, Vince set out on a search for meaning, only to find the truth he was seeking in the place he least expected. Today, Vince helps others discover what he found in Christ, and he’s here to share his story. Let’s get started. Hello, Vince. Welcome to the eX-skeptic podcast. It’s so great to have you with me today.
Vince Revo
02:17 – 02:25
Yeah, it’s great to be here. We’ve been watching a lot of your stuff and looking at all the other former atheists, so it’s a privilege and an honor.
Jana Harmon
02:26 – 02:33
Oh, it’s a privilege to have you on and to have you tell your story as we’re getting started. Vince, can you introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit about who you are.
Vince Revo
02:33 – 03:02
Well, I’m a father of two. We’re filmmakers. We’re also a pastor, bi-vocational, and we’re doing podcasts as well, and we’re doing videos on YouTube, social media, and, yeah, I mean, I just love Jesus and I want to share, hopefully a story that will resonate with some others who have walked the same journey that I have.
Jana Harmon
03:03 – 03:08
Oh, that’s fantastic. And what is the name of your podcast or YouTube channel?
Vince Revo
03:08 – 03:13
Yeah, one is called Revo Report and the other is Vince Revo.
Jana Harmon
03:13 – 03:41
Okay, so we will make sure to put those links in the episode notes so that people can find you there. Let’s get into your story. You connected with me as a former atheist, and I’m so curious to hear your story. I know you hail from Canada. Toronto, I believe. Is that where you were born? Talk with me a bit about where you were born, your upbringing, and whether or not God was part of that picture.
Vince Revo
03:42 – 11:02
Yeah, well, I was born in the Philippines in a small city called Bacalore, and moved around a little bit because my mother worked for an international agency. And so I moved to Singapore, Indonesia, ended up in Canada, around Europe when she started working for the United Nations. And yes, I did. So my mother was a born again Christian. I was baptized actually, when I was a baby, Catholic, and that’s where the name Vince comes from. And I actually grew up in the church when I was 7, I remember, in Toronto. We arrived in Toronto when I was seven and my grandfather had started a church. It was a Bible study, a turn into a church. And so that we would go every Sunday until we moved to Ottawa. And although my mother was a Christian, my father was not. And so when we moved away, we stopped going to church. In fact, my mother would go to church once in a while. But because my father was an unbeliever, that kind of, I think, left all of us, my siblings included, kind of in. In the middle ground. Are we Christian? Are we not Christian? Is church just this thing that we go on Sundays? And I didn’t really grasp the concept of a personal relationship with God. And as I grew up, of course, we were involved in the church. And so for me, what I saw was a kind of a double standard. I saw people behaving differently at home, and I saw them behaving differently at church. And I think growing up, seeing that difference, I had a lot of questions whether this was like the real religion, so to speak. Because at the time I thought, okay, which. What religion do I follow? I would ask pastors, which my uncles were pastors. And the church that I was going to, I would approach the pastor and I would ask him about all of these things. And at the time, of course, growing up in Ottawa, growing Up in Toronto, I had a lot of friends who were Jehovah’s Witness and atheists and nominal Christians and Catholics and a lot of different faith backgrounds and worldviews. And I would interact with them and I would go back to church with these questions. I would ask them about, well, how do we know that Jesus rose from the grave? And I would learn about figures like Mahatma Gandhi. And I would kind of have to wrestle the fact that, okay, if Mahatma Gandhi doesn’t believe in Jesus, he’s going to go to hell, but he did so much good. And all these other figures, what about people who never encountered a Christian in their life, were never told the gospel? Are they going to hell? What about all these other people in Asia that are Buddhists and all of these people going to hell? And so that was what I was really wrestling with, all of these people going to hell. And I would ask, you know, pastors about dinosaurs and Big Bang and the beginning of the universe as we were being indoctrinated in this kind of postmodern public school of doubting the existence of God. And I think I was growing up in Toronto, Ottawa, at the time when it wasn’t just it was postmodern, but I think it was moving into more an anti-Christian kind of culture. And so a lot of questioning about whether Jesus was God. Jesus. Jesus even existed. And so with all of that questioning, eventually I got into, involved in some friends at school who were doing drugs and, and really going into that kind of hedonistic lifestyle. And I think atheism was a justification, looking back, atheism was a justification to do all those things because I knew that the God of the Bible didn’t want me to sleep around, didn’t want me to do drugs, didn’t want me to, to get drunk on the weekends, didn’t want me to go, you know, car hopping and stealing from cars and, and I was stealing from shops. Eventually I got arrested for arson, burning down my school bathroom, and eventually I got shop arrested for shoplifting. I was in and out of these gangs, and I say gangs because they weren’t like officially gangs, but we would go into these fights and, you know, we would break into cars at night. And I was just doing all of these really terrible things and I was justifying a lot of them because I was saying, well, there probably is no God. And because all of these questions that I had were not getting answered. And that’s why today I believe that apologetics is so important because as, as a teenager and it started happening really, probably when I was about 12, 13, 14, those years where a lot of the questions that I had were not getting answered at least sufficiently, you know, oh, just go to the Bible, where the Bible says, well, what about logically, how do we handle this philosophically? And I wasn’t getting satisfactory answers. And so I just slowly kind of backslid away from first believing in Jesus as God, believing in the Bible as a reliable, you know, scripture, questioning the Bible, and then questioning whether there is a God because of, you know, all of the evil that I had been participating in and also the suffering and pain that I had been going through because of, you know, now I see it as my own indulgence, but at the time, I really saw it as I was shaking my fist at God. And so I would pray, you know, the prayers would not be answered. And I would think, okay, well, who am I praying to? And so at that point, from I think believing in God to questioning God, so believing in God and then I think questioning, okay, is there a God? Well, I can’t really know there’s a God to being an agnostic and then finally arriving to, yeah, there definitely is not a God. And I think that was probably in my late teens, before I graduated high school, and I’d met, you know, a humanist high school teacher who was very, very articulate and could share her point of view very well. She, she, she gave me a bunch of these New age sources and I started to read about the new age. I started read about the universe and how, wow, if you just, you know, give positive energy, energy to the universe, it’s going to come back to you. And then slowly but surely, there was movies that came out like the Secret and Law of Attraction. And then that started to pick up. And so I thought, okay, well, yeah, maybe there is no God. Maybe everything is God. And I started to really delve into that. A lot of these practices like yoga, hypnotism, everything outside of, outside of the Bible that I could find that could give me some sense of control, some sense of meaning, some sense of purpose. Because I know that when I didn’t believe in anything, I really didn’t have that. And I started to kind of lean into a lot of these Eastern philosophies and pantheism because I was thinking that, okay, these things are going to get me what I want. And they did. Some of those things did work. Yeah.
Jana Harmon
11:02 – 11:06
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So, yeah, you’ve gone on quite a journey there.
Vince Revo
11:06 – 11:07
Yeah.
Jana Harmon
11:08 – 13:03
Yes. So let’s kind of back up just a little bit. Before we move into pantheism and New Age, let’s, let’s kind of land on that period of atheism for just a moment. So you weren’t believing. You were doubting your belief in Christianity, in God. You weren’t getting sufficient answers intellectually, but yet there were other things that were drawing you. Your friend group, your lifestyle choices. There are other things that were other things that were more enticing. And to boot, you had a humanist teacher in high school who was probably confirming, yes, there is no God. This is all there is. But in that time, in that period of atheism, when you were trying to tease through it intellectually, oftentimes there’s a pushback against God and religion and Christianity because it’s not what it should be, what it could be, you know, you’re not getting the substance there. You’re seeing people live hypocritically. Yes, oftentimes people walk away and for good reason, but they don’t necessarily know what they’re entering into in terms of what does it mean when I call myself an atheist? Is it just a default because Christianity isn’t true? Or is it, ‘I understand this worldview. I understand what it means to be a humanist or to live in a reality without God. I know what that is. I know where that goes. I know what that means.’ Did you contemplate that at all before you moved into this next phase? Or was it just, ‘okay, I can’t believe one thing, so I’ll just go over here. That sounds good.’
Vince Revo
13:05 – 16:05
Yes, that’s. That’s a great question, actually. So I skipped over a part where there was, way back before MySpace, before Facebook, there was this thing called Asian Avenue, and it had a forum where you could talk about things. And because I was in the midst of my search, I started engaging in Muslims and Buddhists and atheists. And so there’s this one forum where I just started. Christianity versus Atheism, Christianity versus Buddhism, Christianity versus Islam, Christianity versus all these different, different worldviews. And so I started engaging with people of these worldviews. And I realized that I was really. I realized that, wow. I, at least I thought because I was ill equipped to defend Christianity at all, that Christianity did not have a backbone because I saw all of these arguments against Christianity. And then I saw obviously the, the Muslims debating the Buddhists and then the atheists debating everybody else. And I think with that, I found that the atheists had just the most intellectual, logical, scientific, historical arguments, although looking back at it, a lot of them weren’t true, but they had almost the most convincing arguments against the existence of God and against religion altogether. And so it became almost where religion is evil. Religion is a means to just control people. And that’s what I thought. I thought, okay, religion is just man made God, didn’t make God, didn’t make man, man made God. And so that’s, I think that was the turning point where. And then I thought, okay, well this is just this old book that is, that really doesn’t have any relevance in today’s modern day society. This is just a book of antiquity that doesn’t have any relevance and it’s outdated to today’s. We’re advanced and we’re enlightened now and this is the book of the past that has, you know, that’s really irrelevant to my life. And I think when I made that disconnect where this book, the Bible and all other religious books really are not relevant to my life and I’ll just discard all of them. And it was this, I like to, I mean, it’s not really an intellectual ascent. That’s what you’re thinking at the time. You’re thinking, okay, well yeah, now I’m atheist, I’m the one that’s scientific, I’m the one that is reasonable, I’m the one that is logical. And all these other religious people are just delusional. And that’s where I was at the time. I really took pride in just rejecting religion altogether because I thought religion was really evil. It was, it was the enemy of, you know, intellectual honesty. And yeah, it was that point, I think, where I really full out rejected not just the Bible, not just God, but all religions altogether.
Jana Harmon
16:06 – 17:05
So, yeah, that’s, that’s really interesting. It must be fascinating to live in such a multicultural environment and culture that you have access not only around you, but also globally through the Internet, that you were, you were willing to go there and actually engage these other perspectives on the world. And, I don’t mean to press this, but I’m, I’m wondering, oftentimes atheists, they know what they’re rejecting, they’re rejecting all the religion. But in terms of what they’re embracing, were you finding arguments for naturalism or materialism or atheism other than that it is scientific, it is rational, or those kinds of things that you say now, looking back, may not have held as much weight or substance when you’re actually looking at arguments for atheism, not just against religion. Does that make sense?
Vince Revo
17:05 – 21:25
Yeah. You know, looking back at it really, when I was trying to defend atheism and justify, I see that it was just really, if I’m going to be 100% honest now, it was a justification for a hedonistic lifestyle. It was a justification so that I could do anything else I wanted to do. There was just, I am my own God, so there’s everything is relative. That was my kind of moral stance, moral relativity. And so I could do anything, say anything, be anything, and I don’t have to feel guilty about it. Even though deep down inside there there was a nudging. I could see that now. But, but I think atheism allowed me to just justify everything and justify also a deep seated anger that I had towards a lot of things in my life, including, I think, my father. That was a big one. And thank God that it was only Jesus that restored our relationship. When my father eventually became a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ, that restored our relationship altogether. This kind of fast forwarding. But there was a lot of, kind of darkness within that not believing in God allowed me to justify. And looking back at a lot of the things that I was reading, for example, I remember at one point I thought, well, Jesus was just this mythic teacher. He was this reiki healer and he wasn’t really God. He never claimed to be God. He was just this healer like Rasputin and then people just made him out to be God. And a lot of those different beliefs came in that really now, looking back at it, knowing what I know now historically weren’t even true. I just believed a lot of things that weren’t true. And then coming to your question of, well, yeah, I was rejecting a lot of beliefs, but what belief was I moving into? To be honest, I don’t really know. And I think that’s what brought me out of atheism because of that kind of, well, I don’t really know what I do believe. I know everything I’m rejecting. And I was never really part of any kind of atheist circle. It was kind of a personal journey moving out of Christianity. A lot of my family were Christians and so I was looked at as, you know, the black sheep, you know, the, the prodigal son, you know, really a lot. And I could sense that in every time we were at a family gathering, I could sense that people were looking at me as this, you know, the, the goth, you know, the, the black sheep in the family. And I think that that made me kind of hold on to my skepticism, even more. So I don’t really know, to be honest, like, what I believed in, in terms of, I was just in a dark place. Yeah, I was just in a very dark place. Suicidal also. And I think that’s why I eventually moved out of that into kind of questioning, okay, well, God, do you exist? And I remember actually asking in my mind, God, do you exist? Like, do you? And actually praying, do you exist? And this is when I was still very much a skeptic. Still very much. You know, I don’t believe in God, but I remember an instance in my basement on my bed, just being so low. I think it must have been, you know, a lot of partying, a lot of drugs, a lot of just fleshly things that I was doing and just feeling empty. Like I’d done everything that I thought I could do so that I could please myself, so that I could make myself feel good and just feeling absolutely empty inside and going and asking, okay, God, do you actually exist? Is there a God, you know, or is this all there is to life? Just doing whatever you want to do, finding every pleasure you can find, and then just feeling empty at the end. And I think that’s when I went into, okay, well, could there be a God?
Jana Harmon
21:27 – 22:15
So that was that place of real honesty, I suppose, that you find yourself having rejected and I guess looking back, the source of life, life that is truly life, and you found yourself in a place of, sounds like aloneness and emptiness and, and questioning and doubting even then. So that is that. So then I suppose we can pick up on your journey into pantheism. Is that where you were going? Okay, I’m willing to consider that there’s something more, but just not Christianity. I don’t want to. I. It sounds like you had closed that door, but you were willing to open another door of spirituality.
Vince Revo
22:17 – 33:04
That’s exactly it. Right. And I think even culturally, we were moving into an age of I’m spiritual but not religious, and I believe in all religions, which I know now is a total contradiction. Right? But that’s where I was. I moved from not believing, like completely rejecting religion and completely rejecting in a God to, okay, could there be a God? Could everything be a God? Could all religion. Religions be right? And there’s just this enlightened knowledge and this esoteric knowledge that we all need to have and. And that Jesus had the same esoteric knowledge as Buddha and, and Muhammad and Gandhi and all of these figures in history that somehow had this secret knowledge. And so that’s when I moved into kind of pantheism, when, and universalism kind of thinking, well, I had completely rejected the notion of hell at this point where, okay, yeah, we’re all going to go to heaven and, and kind of like Oprah, right? You know, all paths lead to God, all paths lead to heaven, which I know now is a total contradiction, right. And so going into that, I actually did find that some of these kind of occultic practices were yielding results, you know, the law of attraction. And, and I was using it really to my evil, to my own personal gain as well. It was all about me at that point. You know, whatever universe was out there, whatever power was out there, I would use for whatever I wanted as opposed to how I live now, which is as opposed to give, writing out a list to the universe and giving that paper and saying, universe, sign this. Now I’m at a point where here’s a blank slate and I will sign it and God, you fill it in. And I was just using the universe or, and what I know now are demonic entities to fulfill still my own desires. And I saw actually success in that relationally career wise. And I saw actually a pickup. And that success led me to the conclusion that, okay, this is the true path. Because when I do meditation and when I do Law of Attraction, it’s actually attracting these things. If I do positive thinking, these things are actually coming into my path and looking back at it the devil’s very deceptive because he’ll give you that candy bar, right? And he’ll give you another candy bar and another one, and another one, and another one and give you what you want, not knowing that it’s just rotting out your teeth and rotting out your insides. And that’s what was happening slowly but surely. I was still really in. There’s a lot of anger still that I hadn’t dealt with, a lot of unforgiveness still that I hadn’t dealt with a lot of bitterness in my life, that I hadn’t dealt with, a lot of resentment still. And that was all just brooding. But I was masking it with, you know, the law of attraction. Okay, just be positive and just be positive. And eventually that fell apart when my relationships fell apart, when, you know, my, my career and my schooling, I saw, started to kind of unravel and I realized, wow, I, I don’t have control over this. And that’s when I was in so I was in the middle of that. I was in an acting rehearsal with this girl who was my classmate. She was married, and we were doing drugs at her place. And during the rehearsal, we started to slow dance. Mind you, I am with. I’m living a very terrible lifestyle. I’m seeing two other girls. I’m doing drugs almost every day. I’m drinking almost every day. And I’m in acting school and we’re doing this rehearsal for stage, and I’m dancing with this married woman. And I don’t know what happened, but I look over at the TV because the TV was playing and we’re doing drugs. So I know something’s. Something could happen with this married woman. I look at the TV screen and I don’t know if it was just somehow I was delusional all at the time. But you know how the credits scroll and the credits are scrolling? So it was the end of this movie or whatever, the credits were scrolling and all I saw in the credits was 666. And I saw that scrolling and I just stopped dancing for a moment. And I was like, am I way too high right now that I just saw 666 just scrolling on the TV. And finally, when that 666 moved off of the TV, I got a call from my brother that I missed. And then I got a text message from my brother that I missed. And the text message read, ‘come home now. Grandpa just died.’ And I lived with my grandpa throughout those very dark years. And I disappointed him a lot because he. He had started that church, right? And I had walked away and I was living with him. I was living in. In his basement and I was smoking up in his car. We got into a lot of fights because he would tell me, come back to God. And before I left for New York, which. Where this incident is happening with this married woman and, and you know, where I’m living a very hedonistic lifestyle. It was all about Law of Attraction attracting everything else I wanted. When. When my brother sent me that text message, I just froze in that moment. And I could see that 666 on the screen. And I remembered the note that was still on my pin board that my grandfather wrote me. And that wrote. That note had on it, ‘repent, go back to God or you’re going to hell.’ And I kept that. I kept that note actually there. And that note was just in my mind. And I know now that was the Holy Spirit just calling me back to him. Eventually I told the married girl. I said, ‘I got to go, I gotta go.’ And I got my guitar, I got all my bag, and I went, I walked on the New York subway, and I just collapsed right in that moment. And all I could see was all the pedestrians’ legs and feet and shoes and what have you, just, just kind of, it was like a time lapse all going past me. And all I kept thinking about in that moment was my grandfather’s dead. He. And I could see that note, Go back to God. Go back to God. Go back to God. I get home and my mother is having a breakdown and she’s crying, and I don’t know what to do. I’m high, right? And I just come up to her and I rub her back and I said, I’m so sorry. And she cried. And the one thing, I don’t know everything that she said, but the one thing I remember her saying was, ‘who’s gonna pray for me now? Who’s gonna pray for me now?’ And I don’t know why I said it, but I said, ‘I’m gonna pray for you. Don’t worry. I’m gonna pray for you.’ And, you know, I was, we were all broken, obviously. My grandfather was very close to me. He was basically a second father to me because I lived with him for a very long time, even in this journey of rejecting God. And it pained him a lot because the Bible studies and the cell groups would be at their home and the church members would see me kind of walk through the door, look at them, and just like, walk right by. I would never join, I would never join one. And eventually we’d have to go back to Toronto. And I went back to my, the basement where my bed was. And I got that note and I got that note and I just folded it up and I put in my wallet. And I don’t know why I was compelled to do that. But then in that moment, I was so moved. There’s so much emotion going around because he was really like a father to me, that I went outside. And this was in February. So around this time, February, March, early March. And I went outside and I think I was in a T shirt or something, but it was freezing here in Toronto in March it’s still winter. Yeah, it was still cold. And I go outside and I run down the block and sprinting down the block because I have so much emotion inside of me, so much pain, you know, deep seated anger. I still had just some anger towards my grandfather as well, because there were so many unsettled things. I just sprinted down the entire street. I sprinted back and. And I came back back down to the basement. I don’t know what led me to it, but I got down on my knees and I said, ‘God, if you are the real God, then, then, then I will follow you. I will serve you. I will give my life to you.’ And I was just crying, weeping, just in that moment of brokenness. And still nothing really happened, I guess, because at his funeral, like I did methamphetamine, like right after his funeral, just because, just to numb that pain. But I remember that moment of getting down on my knees and saying, ‘God, if you are the one true God, then I will follow you. I will serve you. I give my life to you.’ And that moved me, I think, closer out of kind of the New Age and Law of Attraction and started to kind of, okay, is Jesus God now? He can’t be God. All these things I’ve read. So I was still in that. I was maybe, yeah, still was not believing in Jesus at the time. Still didn’t think the Bible was reliable or infallible in any way. But that was a very critical moment because to this day, that prayer, to me, it’s so vivid. That moment was, Is so vivid. And I know somehow God used that moment as well, of incredible pain to. For a purpose. And so, yeah, that probably was a moment where I was moving out of now, the new age.
Jana Harmon
33:05 – 33:29
Yeah. Obviously incredibly deeply emotional. Like you say, one of pain, but clarity. Yes, for a purpose. So you, you then made a decision and you knew that you had given your life to God, if he is real. But yet you’re telling me you still didn’t believe the Bible, you didn’t believe the truth of Christianity. So what did you do?
Vince Revo
33:29 – 33:30
Still so much doubt.
Jana Harmon
33:30 – 33:32
Yeah. So what did you do?
Vince Revo
33:32 – 36:37
Well, I went through a period of really soul searching. I started to work, I started to. I started up a band, actually got a bunch of my friends who was so. One was a Muslim, one was a atheist, and I was the kind of, you know, New age, you know, pantheist. And I thought, okay, this is it. You know, it’s like all the religions are right, and the one true God, maybe there is a God out there and he’s the God of all religions. So I was still there in that journey. And there was an opportunity actually to go to the Philippines and my mother, you know, had been saying, you know, I’m praying for you. There’s an opportunity to go to the Philippines. Would you want to go back to the Philippines? And I thought, well, I’m not doing anything in Toronto, really. So, yeah, why don’t I go back to the Philippines? And so I go to the Philippines and I’m still living, you know, a very, very dark lifestyle, still drinking, still doing drugs, still just sleeping around. And I was living in this place where it was this condo and I was running out of rent, and there was this lady who had met, you know, just kind of have a friendly conversation with. And she had a young daughter at the time as well. And she would, you know, invite me to church. And I would tell her, oh, no, I’ve already, you know, I grew up in church, right? My grandfather started a church. You know, I know all about that. I gave my life to Christ. We did Deliverance. And, you know, I know all about that. And she said, okay. And every once in a while, she would come knocking at my door because we were neighbors at this condo. And she’d just bring me food. And so I would, you know, take the food because I was really running out of money. And I would just show up sometimes, like with a cigarette, you know, at the door with a tank top cigarette, just lounging. And she’d give me food and. And I would. I would receive it gladly, thank you. You know, and so every Sunday, she would. She would give me food every Sunday, and so I would take it. And then one Sunday. One Sunday, she said, ‘you know what? This Sunday I don’t have any food for you. Why don’t we go out to eat?’ And I said, ‘even better,’ right? No takeout, but we’re actually going to go to a restaurant. And so we’re walking past this mall and she goes, ‘oh, actually, you know what? Before we go out to eat, why don’t we go to church first?’ And I thought, ah, she tricked me. And so I said, ‘all right.’ You know, and this is the first time back at church for years. I can’t even recall how long it’s been. Maybe close to a decade or so, okay, that I hadn’t been to church.
Speaker 16
36:37 – 38:02
And so I go to church and I don’t know what the sermon was. I don’t even know what song it was that was playing, but something happened there where the Holy Spirit just moved me and touched me that there, right then and there, I gave my life to Jesus again. Where I said, ‘okay, God, you are real. Okay God, you are God. And, and I surrender my life to you.’ And I didn’t know it then, but I had a moment as well before that lady came where I had my, I had the Bible, the first Bible that my mom gave me. And I did get down on my knees again. This time I didn’t just say, ‘God, I will follow you.’ I got down on my knees. This is before we went to the church. I forgot this part, but I got down on my knees, I put my hand on the Bible and I didn’t say, ‘God, if you are real, I will follow you.’ I said, ‘Jesus, if you are the one true God, reveal yourself to me. Show me that you are the one true God.’ And I think it was a couple weeks later where that lady came and she brought me to church. And then I would end up surrendering myself to Jesus again.
Vince Revo
38:02 – 40:19
And then from then on I started going back to church every Sunday until my faith started to grow. And then I met this girl who was a Christian and our relationship didn’t end up working out. But she was definitely a catalyst for me to draw even deeper in my faith because she invited me to a church camp which again, I dedicated my life again to Jesus. A three day church camp. And I remember meeting up with this pastor and having a one on one with his pastor. And I told him, I said I was in a really dark place, I was suicidal, I was doing drugs every day. I was extremely unfulfilled, even though I was trying to do everything to, to please my flesh and to pleasure myself. But I just want to tell you right now, can we pray that if ever I backslide again, if ever I’m going to backslide again, that God just take me before I backslide again? Because I don’t want to live that life ever again. I was in such a place of peace, of light, of hope, that it was such a contrast to the darkness that I was living for so many years as a skeptic. I was just in such a dark place, but I didn’t know I was in a dark place. I didn’t know there was so much anger inside me, there’s so much hatred inside me. And even to the point where my father would later become a believer at Times Square Church, he would surrender his life to Jesus. And I remember the first time I saw him as a believer. I’d never received a hug from my dad. I’d never really remember receiving an encouragement from my dad. But that this is when I started to believe in Jesus again. I started to go to church again. I see my dad at the airport. I’m not expecting anything. I’m just picking him up. Okay. You know, we don’t really have a great relationship. He comes up to me and he kind of gives me this. He kind of leans in for a hug. And I don’t know what’s going on because I’d never gotten that from my dad. He comes in for a hug, and we’re kind of hugging it out. We’re trying to, you know, and there’s just this, like, okay, hug.
Jana Harmon
40:19 – 40:19
Awkward.
Vince Revo
40:19 – 42:23
You know, And I thought, like, okay, what was that? And then he looks at me and he goes, ‘you look good. You look good. I’m proud of you.’ And for all my years of my life, I had never, never heard my dad say that to me. I’d never received a hug like that from my dad. And that was a moment as well that I knew my mom tried to change my dad, his siblings tried to change my dad, that my siblings and I tried to change my dad. And nothing could change my dad. But somehow, some way, Jesus changed my dad. And that was further confirmation for me to know, wow, Jesus, you are just revealing to me that you are truly God. You are truly the transformative power, the life, the truth, the way of this world. And that was a pivotal moment as well. When I saw a transformation in my own father, when I saw gentleness, when I saw patience in him, I knew, wow, we’re on the right path. This is it. And all of that darkness that I had gone through, I never wanted to go back to it. And that’s why I told that pastor, I’d rather God take me than for me to backslide again, for then for me to be a skeptic again, because there’s so much light now. There’s so much joy and peace and assurance now of where I’m going, of the relationship that I have with the God of the cosmos, that my relationship with God is now is now reconciled via Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross. I don’t want to go back to that lifestyle. I don’t ever want to. I’d rather be gone. I’d rather God take me before I ever backslide and praise God. Since then, I’ve never gone back. It’s just been the steady, slow walk to service to him, to getting to know him more, and to now, obviously, you know, serving at a pastoral level. Right? And it’s just been, yeah, it’s been remarkable.
Jana Harmon
42:24 – 43:47
Yeah. A beautiful transformation story of darkness to light. I know that there were those really pivotal moments where you were submitting to this God of the universe, this, that if he’s real and he was giving you confirmations experientially and with your father. But I’m still wondering, how do you know? Yes, but here I, and I don’t want to dismiss this because I think sometimes those, well, I know that those palpable relationships that are extremely real and convincing that you know that you know. But yet you still had, what happened to those doubts with regard to the truth of the Bible, the reliability of the text? How did it relate to the other religious offerings that were surrounding you. How did you know that God, your God? I can hear the skeptic saying, well, you just, you know, you have a family legacy, a family heritage and all of that. A woman took you to church. Of course you’re going to accept that God. But he did show up. I mean, and it was convincing. But how can you tease out some of that pushback, perhaps?
Vince Revo
43:48 – 47:35
Yeah, well, I mean, I had gone through also I had, you know, not extensively, obviously, but I mean, I had studied Buddhism, I had studied Islam, I had studied Hinduism. Right? So I was studying also these other major religions. And actually Christianity was the one I rejected the most because I was most familiar with it. And, you know, throughout that, it was really the reason why I’m just enamored with apologetics and, you know, people like you who have taken on such a monumental task to learn all the arguments against Christianity, because it was people like you, books and videos and audios, I was looking at the Christian apologetics, and I was looking at the naturalistic worldview and the atheistic worldview, and I was going, okay, which one makes sense? Right? Which one makes sense from a logical standpoint, from a scientific standpoint, from a philosophical standpoint? And I think everybody’s going to have to wrestle with God at that level because nobody’s going to be able to answer that for them. But to have to be intellectually honest and say, ‘okay, which one really makes sense the most?’ Right. And it was a lot of different teachings from apologists that really grounded me eventually in that. And to this day, I see the importance of apologetics because growing up, there wasn’t really a lot of apologetics, even for me as an atheist before, I never liked to defend atheism, like, even now, like, atheists don’t like to defend atheism, right. They’ll just say, well, I just don’t believe in a God. And it’s the onus is on you to, to prove there is a God, right? Well, actually, I mean, just like what Frank Turek says, right? Actually that is still a belief. You still believe in no God. That is not a lack of belief. It’s still a belief in no God. And so my encouragement would be, look at both sides and you know, if, if you really are sincerely want to know whether there is a God, then, then shout out that sincere prayer. That’s what I did even when I was a skeptic. Just shout out a sincere prayer. Challenge God to reveal himself to you. Challenge Jesus to reveal himself to you. And if he is real, he’ll reveal himself to you. If he’s not real, you have nothing to lose. If he is real, you have everything to gain. And if he’s not, then, well, you just go back to doubting him and, you know, causing other people to doubt him. Right? Which is, I think the, the move of that new atheist was really the more evangelistic atheist, which I was not. But I’m seeing that now. And I think it’s important for a lot of Christians now also to step up and to step in and to say, hey, I’m not ashamed of the Gospel and I will not deny Jesus Christ. And yet I will stand up for what I believe. I’ll stand up for the Bible, I will stand up for Jesus Christ because he stood up for me. And I’m so excited for what’s to come in Christendom and this generation and how a lot of people like yourself and a lot of the young ones are using the technology to stand up and say, Jesus is real, Jesus is God, the Bible is reliable and actually actively defending it because there’s a lot out there spreading misinformation. And a lot of the tenets of atheism that I believed in were on falsities like they were on things that were not even real. Right? A lot of the doubts before were not even real.
Jana Harmon
47:36 – 48:46
Yes, absolutely. There’s nothing more important than that than truth and standing for it and seeking after it in order to find freedom and life. Now, one thing that also strikes me about your story, Vince, is, yes, standing up for truth. But I look at your beautiful neighbor, well, your grandfather, of course, who was actually doing something really hard which was calling you to repent because he loved you. But there was someone in that the Lord put in your life in an answer to your prayer you were seeking, you were open. And there was a woman who was, hospitality was the way to your heart, in a sense, in a sense, relationally, she gained credibility with you so that you would come with her. Now, granted, it was a little bit of a bait and switch there at the end that got you to the door, but she had paved the way through serving you towards, with generosity towards you, towards. I mean, she initiated with someone who expressed little to no interest in what she was offering.
Vince Revo
48:46 – 52:54
I was outright rejecting everything. She was saying, ‘coming to church?’ ‘No, no.’ ‘Come to a Bible study?’ ‘No, no.’ You know, ‘come to a discipleship group?’ ‘No, no, no, no.’ I was really rejecting everything about Christianity when she was offering it, but I wasn’t rejecting the meals. Right? And yeah, we need that. We need someone like that. And her name was Chit. And I want to honor her right now because, in fact, about a year or two after I started going to church again, she passed and she had an aneurysm and she passed out and I think she hit her head on the toilet and she died soon after. And I can’t help but wonder if, you know, God really sent her at that perfect time, right before he was going to take her just to send me food every Sunday and then to eventually bring me to church. And it was because of that woman’s life, and she’s in heaven now with Jesus. But it was because of her willingness, despite my complete rejection of church, of the Bible, of Jesus, to continue to pursue that. Something in her led her to say, I’m going to keep reaching out to this lost soul. I’m sure she could recognize the dark place that I was in. And we need that. I think more so than ever, we need to be that Chit. We need to be that one offering food or whatever felt need there is. If it’s, do you need me to pick you up? Do you need me to drop groceries off? Do you need me to sit and just listen? But we need to respond with grace and with love, just like this lady did for me. She set the example for me. She reminded me and continues to remind me that we’re going to run into skeptics out there. We’re going to run into atheists and people who are vehemently against what we believe. And how are we going to respond? Because we are the hands and feet of Jesus that may just connect them back to him. Not even to try and convert someone, just build that relationship, build that trust and show them that, hey, you’re a genuine person, you know, get rid of all the stereotypes. Right. Because I thought Christians were, were crazy and hypocritical. That’s where I was coming from. Oh, you’re a Christian. You must be hypocritical. You must not, not be very intelligent and having all of these kind of. What’s the word? Stereotypes, Right. But she kept showing care, she kept showing a genuine kindness. And eventually that will break someone down. I believe that will break, you know, the hardest of hearts down. I know it’s difficult. I, I know we don’t want to do it. Most Christians don’t want to do that. Right. We just want to go to church, live in our kind of, live in that four walls. Okay. We’re comfortable in this kind of Sunday environment, but we need to get out there, connect with those that make us uncomfortable, connect with those that don’t want to be near us and somehow establish some type of rapport. Right. Some type of friendship, you know, for the sake of, for the sake of them, if we really care about them and for the sake of the kingdom and really the Great Commission. Right. We’re all called to do that, not just pastors, not just apologists. If we claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then we should be missionaries, right? We should be the ones evangelizing, developing those connections, because that connection could be that bridge for that person to move from darkness to light.
Jana Harmon
52:56 – 53:33
Absolutely. You have come a long way in your journey. You took the long road around moving from an offering of light, I guess, but there were things there that weren’t there for you at the time, and you moved and went your own way. But I just think of your beautiful grandfather who must be smiling as a great witness to your life at the moment, who encouraged you to come back and now look at you as just a beautiful ambassador for Christ. Because, you know, that’s where light is, right? Where life is.
Vince Revo
53:33 – 53:33
Yeah.
Jana Harmon
53:34 – 54:21
You’re sitting here. You don’t look like someone who’s in darkness anymore. You have so much life to give, and it’s because of the Jesus who’s living inside of you. Right? So, yeah, just overflowing. And it’s such a blessing, Vince, to have you on, for you to tell your story. And I really appreciate you being so candid and forthcoming. And I just hope and pray a blessing on you and your ministry because he obviously has you positioned in this generation among Gen Xers, Gen Zers, whomever is willing to hear that you’re extending yourself in a hospitable way, giving of yourself so that others may come to the feast. So thank you so much for coming.
Vince Revo
54:23 – 54:27
Yeah, thank you for having me. What a privilege and what an honor.
Jana Harmon
54:28 – 55:03
Thank you for joining us at eX-skeptic and for listening to Vince Revo’s wonderful story. We hope it inspired questions in you as you reflect on your own journey of faith and belief. To learn more about Vince’s own podcast, YouTube channel, and other resources, be sure to check out our episode notes. If this is your first time with us, we’re thrilled to have you here. eX-skeptic offers over 100 compelling stories and resources on our website at exskeptic.org While you’re there, sign up for our monthly newsletter and to stay connected and inspired.
55:04 – 55:54
Are you a curious skeptic? If you have big questions and would like to discuss them with one of our former guests, we’d love to help make that connection. Just email us@infoxsceptic.org we’d love to hear from you. Your feedback matters Share your thoughts, suggestions or ideas through comments on our platforms or via our email. Your input helps guide our conversations and ensures we’re addressing the questions that matter most to you. This podcast is part of the C.S. Lewis Institute Podcast Network. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, be so grateful if you could follow, rate, review, and share it with your friends and network. Your support helps us reach more listeners with these transformative stories. We hope you join us next time where you’ll hear another unlikely story of belief.
