December 10, 2004

Dear Fellow Believers,

This is Martin Zender, coming to you live from high atop the glass towers here at Zender headquarters, which is a joke—I hope you know—because this is a 150 year-old building with 75 year-old windows that can’t quite keep the cold out. And yet Jesus was born in a barn, so I am heartened.

Mine is not a huge organization, and neither is Starke & Hartmann a Fortune 500 publisher. All of what you’ve been reading and hearing about God through my books, the CD, and martinzender.com is the result of a vision I had twelve years ago. It was not a literal vision of winged beings, but a mental picture of what God called me to do in my prime of life. And that was to tell the news of the evangel of the grace of God to those who have never heard it. I wanted people to know that God was more gracious, powerful, and loving than Billy Graham said He was.

Employment, 202

I worked for the U.S. Postal Service from 1985 through 1993. When I got hired, I felt like I’d struck gold. To work for the Postal Service was thought to be a dream job. I guess it was. It was a secure job with good pay and benefits. The only way one could lose it was to kill supervisors and co-workers, and even then the bosses could still probably use you to deliver mail on Saturdays—in an emergency. By the time 1990 rolled around, I was making $17 an hour, which at that time (and still today) is a decent wage. I needed a decent wage to support my wife and growing family.

I have been conscious of the hand of God upon me since I was eight years old. I always felt a sense of destiny, like God was going to use me to do something important. Growing up, I had no idea what it was. For a while, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I wanted to be a professional football player. When I was ten, I wanted to be an explorer. I would have settled Kentucky, but Daniel Boone had already done it. Then I thought that a professional drumming career might be in my future. I did end up doing that for a while, playing Top 40 hits to drunken veterans at the VFW. I belonged to a group called—I’m sorry to say—The Polytones. I did whatever my hand found to do, never loosing my sense of awe for life and what it could hold.

All this time, I loved to write. By the time I turned eight or nine, I was writing poetry and short stories. My mom’s favorite poem was, "The Zoop." I wrote "The Zoop" in the fourth grade. It was about a strange creature with short black hair and a red tail that lived in the bathtub. One dark and stormy night, The Zoop fell asleep and met his demise—along with twenty gallons of water—via the drain.

Out the window, into God’s arms

I stuttered when I was a kid, which is a surefire way to hate school. My twelve years of compulsory education were terrible years because of wanting to talk fluently and not being able to. When asked to stand up and read aloud, I would pretend to lose my place. I’d put on a big show of being stupid, and it worked. The teacher would tell me to sit down, and all the kids would laugh. I was glad to sit down, but I never saw what was so darn funny about a poor kid losing his place in a book.

All through school, I would "forget" to do oral report projects. "Memory lapses happen," I’d say to my irritated teachers. Part of my grade problem in school was that I dodged assignments that would have required me talking in front of the class. Another part of my grade problem was that I snuck out of bathroom windows occasionally—for a breath of fresh air. The upside of being a stutterer was that I found fluency in the written word. So I wrote things like "The Zoop," and found meaning in life.

As you know, I was raised in the Catholic Church. There was always a religious influence in my life, at least on Sunday mornings between ten and eleven o’clock. I knew at an early age that I loved God, and that I wanted to be on God’s side—especially when hell started. I spent years of Sundays staring at the crucifix above the altar at church, trying to figure out what exactly happened to Jesus in Jerusalem that year. I did the whole Lent thing because I wanted to be like my Lord and Savior. I prayed the rosary in bed at night; I went to confession; I skipped recess a few times to kneel at the altar railing in the church and pray for souls in purgatory. I couldn’t stand the thought that there were decent people floating around against their wills in some dim, celestial soup, all because I was throwing a ball around the playground instead of praying my brains out.

In the spring of 1979, I had what the Christian religion would call a "born again" experience. I was watching the mini-series Jesus of Nazareth on television, and the drama of the final installment of Jesus dragging His cross to Calvary moved me. I felt overwhelmed by God’s love and I went into my bedroom and cried. I told God then that I had to find out Who Jesus was and Why He died for my sake. This was the same feeling I’d had years before—the feeling of wanting to know what happened at the cross—only now I was embarking on an intelligent search.

I bought my first Bible at this time, a New American Standard. I still have it. I read that Bible three times. Things were starting to make sense—sort of. I still believed in eternal torment, however, so I couldn’t make total sense of the cross. I still believed that a person had to go to church and eat the magic bread in order to be right with God.

In 1982, my future father-in-law, Art, bought me a concordance. I didn’t know what it was. I said, "What is this, Art?" He told me it was a reference tool that listed every word in the Bible. He gave me a crash course in using it. He showed me the Greek word aion, and how it was wrongly translated "eternal" and "everlasting." Art didn’t believe in the doctrine of eternal torment. I picked up the concordance and thought what a nice doorstop it would make. I didn’t know how anybody could not believe in a doctrine that was "all over the Bible." Art showed me how the doctrine of eternal torment wasn’t in the Bible at all, but I didn’t believe him. God had given me a temporary spirit of stupor.

A year went by, and I married Art’s daughter, Melody. Melody knew the truth of what Jesus had done at Calvary, so I tried to change her mind. I did it civilly, because Melody looked so awesome in her blue jeans and I didn’t want to make her mad. I almost convinced Melody that Jesus was a failure, but she stubbornly remained smarter and more spiritual than me, in spite of the misappropriated scripture passages I whispered in her ear at night.

In 1984, Art gave me a book written in the late nineteenth century by a man named Andrew Jukes. Jukes was a man of large, archaic words. His book was called The Restitution of all Things. That book changed my life. I could not deny the weight of evidence; Jukes had loaded up on about 1149 facts and presented them in neat order. And so, Jesus was, indeed, the Savior of all mankind, as 1 Timothy 4:10 had so plainly declared Him to be. I’m sure Jesus breathed a heavy sigh of relief when I jumped on the bandwagon.

The alternative to the salvation of all was now too ridiculous to consider. The Christ of my childhood grew ten times, like the Grinch’s heart. My heart grew, too. It was a thing of Mt. Crumpet-like proportions to learn that the righteousness of God worked alongside His love. I knew that God was love, but I thought He had to condemn people simultaneously because He was righteous. Then I found out that God sending Jesus to the cross to rescue all humanity was righteous. So saving humanity was righteous and loving, all at the same time. God loved with the purest love known, and He proved Himself righteous by demonstrating His love for all at the cross. The result would be the eventual reconciliation of the universe through the blood of His Son.

Now I really began studying.

To write or not to write

Allow me to return to my writing career. I’d been working for the Postal Service for five years; the year was 1989. I began to wonder if I could convince people to pay me for my writing skills. Friends had told me for years that I had what it took to write professionally. I only half believed them; the other half of me thought they were nuts. Truth was, I was afraid to try. I was intimidated by the prospect of becoming adept at something mightier than the sword.

I went to the local library and took out two books on how to write better, and one book on how to launch a writing career. Those books sat in the passenger seat of my blue Gremlin for two weeks. I didn’t open one of them. The rain blew through the holes in my Gremlin door and dampened the covers. I knew that if I even cracked one of the books, my world would change forever and life would become an uphill battle for me. So when the two weeks were up, I rumbled up to the library chute and dropped the damp volumes into the chute, unopened. I had dodged the bullet. But God never seems to run out of ammo.

The next year, I got the books again, only this time I read them. I credit my postmaster and supervisor for my change of heart. I credit them for eventually making life in the Postal Service miserable.

I started writing better, and became an observer of life. I wrote essays about my family, about the Gulf War (the first one), about plastic yard ornaments, and about the strange way cashiers returned change. I actually had the nerve one day near Christmas (thanks again to my postmaster and supervisor) to send one of my essays to The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the largest newspaper in Ohio. I had written an essay about not being able to lie to my oldest son about Santa Claus. I let a few days go by, then started checking the newspaper every day to see if the story had made it. I never saw it. I was really disappointed. A couple weeks went by, and I called the editor to whom I’d addressed my submission, inquiring after it. The editor’s name was (and probably still is) Jim Strang. Making that call was harder than calling a girl for a date. (I was an insecure writer.) Jim Strang said, "Oh, yeah, wow, what a great story that was. We ran it on the 16^th. You’ll be getting your check in about a week." I hung up the phone, stunned. The story had run two days after I’d mailed it, and I’d missed it. Everyone in northeastern Ohio had read it except me. Along with the check would come a tear sheet of my essay. When the check and tear sheet came, I stared at them, gratified. I’d become a professional writer.

I began writing feature stories for a small newspaper then, called the Mansfield News Journal. They called us correspondents. After several months at the paper, I got my own column, complete with accompanying photo. I wrote about flies taking over the world, about why I hated to mow grass, about my favorite cat, and about how Barbie (the doll) nearly committed suicide outside her New York apartment one Christmas day. My editor Jeannie Gorgas thought my creative machinery leaned toward the odd, but everybody liked my stuff. In addition to my News Journal columns, I kept sending stories to The Plain Dealer, and the paper kept publishing them and sending me checks.

I was surprised when one particular Plain Dealer story saw print. I had transplanted modern, politically active Christians into first-century Jerusalem and made them successfully rescue Jesus from the cross. The story ran at Easter. It was called "When Christians Rescued Christ." The story was so controversial that Jim Strang got into trouble for publishing it. I got bold and brassy on the heels of that, sending my already-published material to bigger papers—just to see what would happen. Within a year, I had bylines in the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and other major dailies.

Besides my growing family, my loves at this time were studying scripture and writing. It was only natural for me to begin putting the two together.

Go thou and do likewise

In 1983, my wife had introduced me to the work of a man named Ray Prinzing. Ray lived in Boise, Idaho, and wrote a newsletter called Letters of Truth. Every three weeks, Ray self-published this paper—a simple, six page letter stapled on the upper left-hand corner, folded over once and slapped with an address label—mailing it to anyone who wrote asking him for it. He had around two thousand subscribers. Ray Prinzing believed in the success of Christ, and I learned a lot from his writings. When John Lennon first saw Elvis swinging his hips and making girls scream, he thought to himself, Hmm, now there’s a good job. That’s exactly what I thought to myself when I found out that Ray Prinzing was writing about God on six pieces of typewriter paper, mailing it to people, and earning a living from it.

In 1985 I began my own six-page publication, modeling it on Ray Prinzing’s Letters of Truth. I called it Food For Thought. I’m pretty sure it was boring. I did pack it with truth, though. I mailed to eleven subscribers. I thanked my father-in-law Art at this time for the Young’s Analytical Concordance he’d given me; I’d since found something else to stop my doors with. (I still have that concordance.) I kept trying to improve my writing. After six months, however, Food For Thought still had eleven subscribers.

Then came the fateful day in 1992 (three children now added to the mix) that I looked myself in the mirror at 4:30 a.m. and asked myself, before going to work, what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I knew that the answer wasn’t: put the same letters into the same mail slots for the next twenty years. As I was formulating my answer and debating whether or not to shave, God Himself posed the question: "Forget about money, Martin. Forget for a moment that actions have consequences, and let’s play a little game. If you could do anything you wanted for a living, what would it be?" Well, when He put it that way, the answer was simple. "I would study and write about You," I said to God. "I would study and write about You full time, and continue to share the truth with others." "Would you shave?" God asked. "I’m not sure," I answered. "Probably."

This was a big joke. It was a game I was playing with myself—wasn’t it? No one quit the Postal Service; no one was that stupid. I had a wife and three children to support. But I remember thinking that there was a gaping need in the world for truth about God. It occurred to me that, in order to find happiness, people needed to hear right things about God. They sure weren’t getting this in church. People were chronically distraught, and didn’t know why. They thought more church was the answer, but this only made the problem worse. Millions were imprisoned in religious bondage. I felt for these people, and I wanted to help them. The phrase began to circulate in my mind then: "Studying and writing about God is a legitimate living." This was an awkward phrase, but it sufficed for circulating purposes.

I looked at my prospective field and saw how few people knowing the truth were fit to communicate with a young, modern audience. Few even considered the people they were writing to "an audience." I was troubled as well that so few people published truth full time. I didn’t understand the hesitancy to pour every ounce of resource into battle against religious deception. It was as if people were giving all their energy to their "real jobs," then relegating whatever was left to the defense of the Deity. I didn’t get that. It was a tragedy to me. I knew that the Christian religion, with all its false teachings, was spending millions, even billions of dollars training thousands of people to labor full time in teaching the world—what? About a God of conditional love whose attempt at salvation at Calvary was too weak to overcome Adam’s sin.

Slowly, a week at a time, I began to think more seriously about leaving the Postal Service. Have you ever hatched something that you would call a "crazy idea," but then, because the idea is so crazy, you dismiss it? But then a day or a week later it resurfaces, only this time with some of the craziness sanded off to make it seem less daft? But then you shake it out of your mind again anyway, because it still scares the daylights out of you. But it doesn’t stay away because it really is a good idea; it’s just different. It creeps back into your head and lodges behind your eyes. This went on with me for a month.

I don’t remember the exact moment I knew I would do it. I’ve probably blocked it from my mind, so terrifying was it. There were moments after making the decision that peace overwhelmed me. Other moments fell like concrete to the back of my skull. What would I tell my parents? My in-laws? My boss? How could I know for sure that I could make enough money to support my family?

I went for a walk through the woods around this time, wrestling with angels and demons. It was a pleasant walk, except for the demons. During a break in the action, God gave me a life-changing thought. With my old Food for Thought publication, I was forcing myself to write like Ray Prinzing. I was trying to write "spiritually." I wanted to sound adult-like and smart. The life-changing thought was that the world of spiritual seekers already had a Ray Prinzing newsletter. What it needed was a Martin Zender newsletter. And I knew the guy! "So that’s why I only have eleven subscribers," I said to a big tree.

I realized then that I was going to have to stop trying to write like other people and start writing like myself. As obvious as it sounds now, this was sweet revelation to me. As the revelation settled, several of my troublesome demons ran for cover. I felt free. I would write my scriptural newsletter just like I wrote my newspaper essays. Why should I change hats and switch voices just because I wrote about plastic chipmunks one minute and the God of the Universe the next? I was funny, satirical, and a bit crazy in my essays and newspaper columns. Why not carry that natural bend to my new newsletter? I’d cram it with cartoons, and maybe some of my own drawings. Was this legal? I had never seen such a newsletter, but as the saying goes, a writer writes what he can’t find at the bookstore. I imagined that such a publication would appeal to the truth-seeking public. I didn’t know for sure, but I was willing to find out.

Dollars, but little sense

Just before leaving the Postal Service, I went to a financial counselor. This was a terrible mistake; I would have been better off banging my head against a steel pipe. The counselor asked me how many subscribers I had for my proposed newsletter. "Eleven," I said. But then it came to my mind that a few of the people probably wouldn’t like my new cartoons. So I corrected myself and said, "Possibly only eight." The counselor’s face went blank. He still had a mouth and a nose and everything, they just weren’t doing anything. The counselor then asked me how much I was going to charge for my new publication. "Nothing," I said. This was the first time I had actually heard myself talk on this topic, and I didn’t like how I sounded. Neither did the counselor.

The counselor asked me if I’d had any money saved up. I was finally able to answer briskly and with confidence, telling him that, four years earlier, a fellow-worker had talked me into signing up for a retirement account where the government matched my contribution, up to 5%. In four years, the account had grown to $20,000. I was impressed by this figure—when I heard myself say it. The counselor, however, was depressed by it.

"That’s barely enough to get you through your first year," the counselor said in a mocking and incredulous tone. " You’re going to be thin." He kept saying this word, "thin." I was wishing he would quit saying it, but he became enamored with it. And he continued to italicize it. Any monetary fact I could muster in my favor (and they’re weren’t many) was met with "thin...you’re going to be very thin."

At full irritation now, the counselor began scratching numbers and symbols onto his chalkboard. I was confused by the numbers and the symbols. The numbers and the symbols, together, seemed to indicate a horrible future for me. The indication was that I would have to mortgage my house, get a second job, prostitute my wife; perhaps sell my children. Honest to God—I had no idea what the man was talking about. Never one to be confused with Charles Schwab, I became dazed. All I saw on the board were a bunch of numbers, a bunch of %’s, a bunch of $’s, and one or two L ’s. I wanted to cry.

Finally, the man stopped attacking his blackboard and looked at me. I pretended to look back at him, but I was far inside my brain searching for a happy place. I finally nodded solemnly, got up, shook the man’s hand, thanked him for his time, and then walked from the building like Hermann Goering must have walked from the Nuremberg trials. I called Melody from a pay phone and said (I remember these exact words): "It’s all over. We can’t do it. We’re idiots." It was months later when the realization hit me: when God paints you into a corner, your course is unavoidable and God’s will will be done. Fear not to be an idiot. In fact, God employs such. He habitually chooses these kinds of people to confound people like Charles Schwab.

Still, I walked through a tunnel of fear. As I went through the motions of submitting my two-weeks notice, I endured times so paralyzing that I couldn’t talk. The reality of what I’d be putting my family through sunk in. Once a person quits the Postal Service, he cannot go back. A person in postal employ needn’t worry about burning bridges—the government does that for him. The only marketable skill I had was the ability to put words together in a sensible and entertaining fashion. Still, I was walking off a cliff; freelance writing was one of the hardest businesses to make a living at, especially when the writer charges no money for his product. Thank God for Reader’s Digest. A quote I read in that magazine around this time said: "When you jump off a cliff, you will build wings on the way down." I thanked God for the quote; lauded Jesus for the genius who had italicized the "will."

Comfort was not to be found in concrete realities, for this was a walk of faith. All the concrete realities screamed, "fool." Yes, there was the twenty thousand dollars at the credit union, but that was only to help underwrite my first year. I knew how quickly that money would evaporate. But again, faith is not about seen things. If you can see clearly how you’re going to get from Point A to Point B, faith is void.

I quit the Postal Service on October 1, 1993.

Every time I went to the credit union to withdraw from the precious account, I’d feel sick. Big numbers turned smaller and smaller. I dreaded the day when everything would turn to zeroes. That money was my security. I thought I was walking by faith, but I wasn’t because the money was a safety net. This may sound strange to some, but the day in 1994 when I withdrew the last dollar was a glad day. Why? I had nothing more to lose. This was the day when I started walking by faith. I drove away from the credit union that day exhilarated. I had graduated downward to the end of the rope, the place where God worked His finest miracles.

The newsletter began to slowly build a readership. As I suspected, people had never seen anything like it. They were ready for it. At its peak, my little publication visited six hundred mailboxes. Big deal? It was to me, and to the owners of the mailboxes. As I said, I never charged money for the newsletter. I told people: "If my writing helps you; if it changes your life; if it gives you peace and introduces you to the glories of God, then pay me what you think it’s worth." And by this method I made a living. Better to say that by this method I made crisis management a way of life.

Nearly every month was a trial. I honestly never worried about income; humiliation kept me busy enough. God humiliated me again and again, financially. But as often as He crushed, He blessed. It all balanced out—the gives and the takes—and my family and I led a safe and cozy life on the high wire overlooking doom.

God was training me to not look down at the water. He was training me to sit on a chair on a high wire above Niagara Falls and read Sunday’s football scores. The wind would howl, the wire would sway, the waves on the Niagara River would spit and spray, and I would remark to the family, "Well, the Browns lost again, this time to Pittsburgh." And for eleven years, with precious few respites, I’ve lived on this wire. And the Browns continue to lose to Pittsburgh.

The dumb shall speak

Allow me to regress. When God pulled me from my postal grave in 1993, I told Him that I would do whatever it took to spread the good news. I began going to conferences to listen to qualified teachers, and to learn more about the amazing salvation won for the world at Calvary. At one such meeting in Windham, Ohio (in June of 1994), the conference organizer, Ted McDivitt—a subscriber to my newsletter—walked up to me in my little plastic chair and said, "I have a speaking slot open tomorrow at 2 p.m., and I’d like you to take it."

Oh, Ted McDivitt. Why, Ted McDivitt? Why would you purposely approach me in my comfortable plastic chair and ruin my already perilous life? At best, you have just spoiled my enjoyment of your wonderful conference; at worst, you have damned me to a perspiratory hell. I promised God that I would take advantage of every opportunity to teach truth, and yet now you have set my worst fear before me: public speaking. I’ll never forget what I did at that moment. I crossed my arms, closed my eyes, turned my brain off and said, "Sure, Ted. Okay."

I may have slept an hour that night, but I doubt it. Worry was my nightcap, dread the case around my pillow. Around 2 a.m., I decided to speak on a subject I’d been studying: Paul’s thorn in the flesh. At 6:25, the sun rose upon the day of my death. Readying my car for the ten-mile drive back to Windham, I hoped for battery trouble. But alas, these pesky batteries never fail when you want them to.

Several speakers spoke before me. I envied them because they were finished. They all came up to me and wished me luck. I tried to answer, but all my spit was gone. As the Romans prepared my cross, a big German guy named Herb Dirks, came up to me and said, "I give you some advice." I could only stare at him. "Get up, speak up, and shut up," he said.

I still had time to go into the tiny bathroom and kneel at the soap-caked sink. I prayed to God that He would somehow speak through me. I begged Him to get me through my trial. I felt so weak and insufficient. I have tried, since then, to never forget that feeling.

I took the lectern and faced fifty people, ninety-seven percent of whom were older, wiser, and better-salivated than me. It is not a figure of speech when people say that knees knock; mine rattled like castanets. My heart was beating like something out of a Poe story. In the midst of this torture, I began to speak.

The age of miracles, apparently, is still upon us. How else to explain what happened? God took my weakness and turned it into strength. I know He said He would do that, but I never really believed Him. Following my little prayer in that bathroom, God had freed me to make an ass of myself; I was free to fail. Approaching that podium, I realized in the depths of my telltale heart that the message outweighed the messenger, and that people weren’t here to listen to me, but to what God would have to say through me. Words came. They didn’t come flawlessly, but they came. Like Christmas in Whoville, they came just the same. God slowly settled my nerves and made me fluent. Somehow, a half hour passed; I had drank three cups of water. Afterwards, people shook my hand (it had finally stopped shaking on its own) and said, "Hey, that was so interesting." I was so relieved. I just kept nodding my thanks. And I really had to use the bathroom for purposes besides praying.

After that, people asked me to speak at their conferences. They did this not just because of my Scriptural knowledge, but because I’d learned liberation at the podium. I never forgot the lesson learned at the soap-caked sink: I was only a vessel of God, sent by God to deliver His message. Thus educated, I had dodged the mortal enemy of all stutterers: self-awareness. After all the years of being stopped up, however, I was like a calf leaping through spring grass. Nobody could shut me up.

Back to my writing career.

The Seattle Revelation

After six years of newsletter writing, the numbers peaked. I was interested in numbers only because the more people I could convince of the truth, the more people would magnify God in their hearts and minds. I was not out to build a kingdom, but to get people to believe in God in spite of what the clergy told them. But after six and a half years, I found myself preaching to the choir. While my subscribers and I were getting smarter and smarter, the world was getting dumber. I wanted to reach out to a larger audience. I wanted to take the good news message beyond these insiders who had known the truth their whole lives. My choice was either give the satiated scholar-types more and finer details, or break dawn upon a people I’d never met.

I had a bend for the sunrise.

It was the same thing on the speaking circuit. I would go to some places armed with nine different messages, all uniquely slanted. The preparation was taxing. I thank God for that time, because I grew in the Word and learned a lot. But I felt that God was calling me to take what I already knew and to give it to people who had never heard it. I wanted to concentrate on one message, not nine. It was at this time that I thought about writing a book. Writing the newsletter satisfied me for a while, but I wanted to put my words in a more permanent format. Newsletters went to paper drives, generally, but books outlived their authors. God kept saying to me over and over again, "Write a book…write a book…write a book." I took Him seriously.

In 2000, my family and I got invited to Seattle to share the grace of Christ with a small group there. At first, I didn’t want to go; I was already doing too much traveling. But here was an opportunity for my family to travel together to the Pacific Northwest, where I’d never been. Our hosts, Stan and Ruth Hartmann, believed in our work. So off we went to the land of Starbucks. Maybe we’d see a whale.

What a wonderful time we had. No whales surfaced for us, but something significant did happened at a restaurant outside of town. After one of the meetings, Stan Hartmann took another guy and me out to lunch. I always love it when this happens, not just because of the food, but because of the intimate fellowship with likeminded people. It was raining, naturally, but the booth we picked inside the restaurant was completely dry. At the booth, while picking at my salad, I began telling Stan about my idea for a book.

Stan asked me if I’d ever looked into starting my own publishing company. I said I had, but that it seemed the chicken way out. I always wanted to get published, I said, by a big, New York firm. Stan asked if I thought my ego was involved in that. I told him my ego was president of it. The other guy at the table laughed so hard that that he choked on his café mocha. Stan said that some notable names in literature had started at small firms, or published their books themselves. I said, "Name two," and he said, "Mark Twain and Walt Whitman." I asked if he knew any more. The other guy laughed again. Stan kept talking, and the more he talked, the more attractive his idea looked to me, and the more the other guy quit laughing. For one thing, I would retain creative control of my work. For another, I’d be able to keep most of the profits, rather than surrender 80% (the pathetic industry standard) to a publisher and agent.

I left Seattle whaleless, yet inspired.

Company time, and a new book

I have one other sibling, a sister, who is two years younger than me. She’s also a believer. She’s a smart girl, too, because she loved "The Zoop." Kelly always did believe in me; she knew that I’d be a successful writer some day. Melody and I returned from Seattle, took Kelly to breakfast and asked her, "How would you like to start a publishing company?" Kelly set down her orange juice and said, "Really? Okay." Such a great kid. And smart. On a Monday afternoon, then, about five months later, Kelly and I found ourselves on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise office building in Akron, Ohio, signing legal documents to form a corporation called "Starke & Hartmann, Inc." I picked "Stark" because it was the name of the county Kelly lived in (with an "e" added for flair), and "Hartmann" in honor of the man in Seattle who started me on the road to frequent despair and blinding joy.

All I needed now was a book. Where to begin? How complex should it be? How many topics should I cover? Should I write about hell? Salvation? Free will? Death? Sin? All of the above? I needed to get down to basics. What was the main religious issue in people’s lives? It was the same one the woman at the well asked Jesus about in John 4:20: "You Jews say that Jerusalem is the place people ought to worship," she said to Him, "yet we and our forefathers worship God in this mountain. Where do you say we should worship?" It’s the same thing people are hung up on today: where should we worship? Jesus answered, "Truly I say to you, the hour is coming when you will neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. The hour is coming, and is already here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."

I would write about the problems of going to church.

Three months later, I had finished the manuscript of what would become How to Quit Church Without Quitting God. It was my newsletter in book form. It had the same type humor, the same kinds of cartoons, the same hard-hitting, no-apologies truth. I believed that this book would find its niche in the publishing world and promote truth in a larger way than my newsletter ever did. And it has; just not to the extent I’d expected.

As I write, How to Quit Church Without Quitting God has sold 2000+ copies. It is still selling. That’s great, obviously, and I thank God for it. The book has changed lives, as many personal testimonies bear witness. My only regret is that How to Quit Church hasn’t sold 20,000+ copies. How to Quit Church, like my newsletter, hit a plateau where sales came in trickles, not waves. A small publishing firm has only so much money available for advertising and promotion. When that money disappears, word of mouth takes over. Word of mouth is fine, but it takes time. It’s not that I’m impatient, it’s just that I have the normal human deficiency of not liking to wait.

The circus done come

When it comes to truth, I consider myself "the clown outside the tent." This means that I consider myself the literary link between the regular guy on the street and scholarly works like Andrew Jukes’ The Restitution of all Things. While Mr. Jukes’s book helped me, it was so scholarly and archaically written that the average person would bail out of it on page one. To employ another parable, I consider myself Windows on the scholar’s DOS. I represented the happy little icons atop the vast and complicated operating system. People got a taste of truth through me. With me, they can read, laugh, double-click, play a game or two. If they want to delve more deeply, I provide the resources.

Last year, I took a hard look at where this ministry was headed. Sales of How to Quit Church had slowed, and I wondered why. Besides having no promotional money, what else was holding it back? This: my theology was so controversial that the title alone probably turned a lot of people off. Just the words "Quit Church," I think, kept a majority of churchgoers from picking up the book. Between you and me (and the S&H executives), I’m not so crazy about the title any more. I think it hurt us more than helped us. As I told my sister recently, "Would you read a book called "How to Quit the Catholic Church"? She said, "Of course not." And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Because I’ve already quit it." And I said, "My point exactly. We effectively eliminated a big part of our potential audience."

God does what He does for a reason. That title was the best I could come up with at the time. There’s a new title I’m fooling around with—and a new cover—for the paperback reprint: God Sleeps Late on Sunday. I think this book has a whole new life ahead of it—but that’s another story. I intended to write a theology book for the lay reader, and I did. I still feel today that it’s the most unique theology book on the market. The book continues to find new readers. God has given it a life of its own. The best for this book is yet to come. Why am I telling you all this? Because I am inviting you to become a part of what is developing now at Starke & Hartmann.

I was standing here in my office recently—on a coffee stain, I believe—mulling things over. As so often happens when I stand upon coffee stains and mull, a realization came. The realization was: You need to become the clown outside your own tent. Let me explain that. Not many people are interested in God—have you noticed? They’re interested in church and self-help "spirituality," but not in knowing Who God is. Yet you know that the only kinds of books I write are those that reveal God’s true character. In presenting this God to the public, I cannot help but tear down man-made religious doctrines, and demolish some beloved Christian icons. This does not exactly make me a popular writer. The people who do get it, get it, and they thrill to it—people like you, thank God. But there are so many others not even brave enough to venture past my titles.

I began writing the paperbacks (Martin Zender Goes to Hell, etc.) in an effort to make the truth more digestible and handier still. And I’ve done that. I love the paperbacks, and so do you. But still people fear truth. People’s boats these days are so small that they can’t stand much rocking. People dread change, especially spiritual change. They don’t know what’s good for them. The general reading public doesn’t know Martin Zender well enough to trust him on such weighty topics as death, hell, and salvation—if they even seek information on these topics in the first place. I have no fancy letters after my name to impress people. People like you trust me because you have come to know me. To know me is to trust me is to love me. But this has taken time. You’ve heard my sound bites on the Internet; read some of my personal stories; listened for two months earlier this year to ZenderTalk; tested my conclusions against Scripture. Besides, you have been humbled and have been searching for God, just like me. I thank God for you. I wish there were thousands more like you. I think there are, but I’m not finding them by the standard route. So back to God’s latest revelation to me: You need to become the clown outside your own tent.

It makes the world go ‘round

We turn now to the multifarious and popular topic of sex. A big change of topic? Not at all, because I’m still in the theater of getting mature truth to the multitudes.

I confess to you now—happily—my lifelong fascination with the source of sexual power. Like any normal man, I have lived most my years in awe of the female gender. I told you earlier how God brought together my love of writing with my love of scripture. Now I’m going to tell you how He has brought together my love of writing with my love of scripture with my love of—um—intimate human relations—and how this is going to further God’s Name.

One of the most amazing truths I’ve ever discovered was what God actually took from Adam. In case you don’t know, it was not a rib. Here’s the Cliff Notes on that: had it been a rib, then Genesis would have employed a derivative of the Aramaic word "ala." Instead, we find "tsela," which is Hebrew for "an angular, hollow chamber." To make a long story short (a pity to have to do that), God removed the womb from Adam—the uterus—and closed the flesh up under it (not on the side of it), and from this he built a woman.

Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it wonderful? It answers so many things. What does a man, in the marriage embrace, long for? His missing rib? I don’t think so. But of course you realize what he does long for, and it fits perfectly with what God removed in Eden. When men and women unite in the marriage embrace, they become one flesh. Now you see how true this really is. In the re-uniting of the genders, we see a picture of all humanity consummated in Christ. And this is just the beginning. May I get "down and dirty" now?

Why do men historically chase women, and not vice-versa? It’s because Adam "came up missing," not Eve. This also explains why the eyeballs of cartoon men pop from their sockets at the appearance of an attractive, cartoon femme: God created Eve complete; Adam had the lack. Why do men "go gaga," sexually speaking, while women seem able to keep their heads? Back again to the Garden. It’s the same reason Bill Clinton risked the presidency for a gander at Monica’s thong: men cling to women, and not vice-versa. "For this reason, a man shall cling to his wife," says God’s Word. Wives are never instructed, in Scripture, to cling to their husbands. Do you notice this phenomenon in modern, sexual arenas? The "stronger sex" is the weaker sex because of the weakness of the stronger sex for the "weaker sex."

I have been studying the source of and purpose behind sexual power for nearly ten years now, and have discovered things about men and women that I believe will cure troubled marriages overnight. It all came together when I stumbled upon the Hebrew word "shagah" in the fifth chapter of Proverbs. This is a word meaning "intoxicated," and Solomon uses it to describe the way wives should keep their husbands "continually."

To make another long story short, from July 5 to September 8 of this year, I wrote a book titled Shagah Sex. ("Shagah" rhymes with "gaga," incidentally.) Thank Melody for this wonder. She came into my office in late June to find me depressed and eating an entire box of Wheat Thins. She said, "I want you to start writing that revolutionary sex book you’ve been talking about, and here’s a contract. I drew this up for you, and I want you finished with the book in September." Wonder Woman couldn’t have said it better. Naturally, I did what she said. The subtitle of the book is: King Solomon’s 4000 year-old recipe for restoring courtship-era excitement to a burned-out marriage. I believe this will be my breakthrough book. Why? Everyone is interested in sex.

Here was the answer to becoming the clown outside my own tent. I realized that even my own simple, entertaining scripture books were still too difficult and controversial for most people to pick up. So I had to ask myself, What is the one topic in my repertoire with the most universal appeal that could become the means by which people inquire after my other, doctrinal books? I know it’s a complicated question, but as soon as I asked it properly, the answer came easily to me: sex.

The book is still in manuscript form, but I am working hard to prepare it for publication. Even people in my own town are excited about Shagah Sex. I tell them about it, and they want it yesterday. Nobody in this town ever acted this way about any of my other books. But so many marriages are on the rocks in this town—and everywhere—that people are willing to hear anything new about sex, especially something that could cure their marriage overnight. Let’s put it this way: there are more people interested in sex than are interested in the three Greek words translated "hell." I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this. But then again, yes I do: God’s timing is perfect. My married life changed forever a year ago, and now it is my joy and privilege to share Solomon’s secret with everyone.

So now you see the master plan. It’s not my plan, believe me. I’m pretty sure Satan hates the plan. It’s kind of like I’ve snared him in his own trap; hung him from his own tree. Satan is the one who has made sex one of the gods of this eon. Now I’m turning that on him and using sex to lead people to God. I’m writing not only to save marriages, but to introduce thousands of people to the true greatness of God.

Please join me

Again, I’m telling you all this because I need your help. I now consider you an insider. It wasn’t always this way. At every step along this harrowing, twelve-year walk, I thought the project at-hand was the "be all, end all." I thought my first newsletter was the greatest thing going, and that it would reach hundreds of people. So? It reached eleven. I sweated over every detail of those papers. But as soon as I saw the need to start writing like Martin Zender instead of Ray Prinzing, I realized that Food For Thought was only practice for the next publication. When I launched the new and improved newsletter, I thought it was the greatest thing ever, and that it would reach thousands of people. I worked to make it perfect and I mourned every typo. Did I reach thousands of people? No, but I reached 600—not bad.

Then I wrote How To Quit Church. At that time, I realized that the years of writing the Zender newsletter were practice. They were all to prepare me to write HTQC. So out came the book, and I wanted it to reach millions. Did it? No, but it did reach over two thousand, and the book continues to open eyes in the lives God has destined it to touch.

But now this. God has never taken me backward. How to Quit Church, I realize now, was practice for Shagah Sex. The spiritual revolution is under way. I have thought this for years, that there will be a revolution of spiritual knowledge before Christ returns. I have seen myself as an integral part of this happening. To think that the revolution may begin in the bedroom is a marvelous thought to me. It’s too improbable a plan to be of my own making.

For these past eleven years, I have spent many tear-filled moments beneath this desk. I used to tell people that my most powerful and prolific work was done beneath my desk, not at it. Beneath my desk is where I fall when there is nowhere else to go but floorward, toward God, asking Him, "What next?" I will not detail for you all my humbling moments. God’s answer to the many trials has always been, "My grace is sufficient for you." In the wake of the trouble, He will send some small thing that will brighten the picture just the tiniest bit. God knows I am an optimistic person, and that it doesn’t take much to rescue my soul from despair. And so He points me to a small point of light and says, "Give it one more day." I do, and a day becomes a week, which becomes a month. I look down to find that I’m enduring, and producing good work again. This walk ain’t pretty, folks. But now you know the rest of the story.

I consider Shagah Sex to be the best book I’ve written to date. I’ve learned much from all my past mistakes (in cover design, title-selection, etc.) and put my new knowledge into this present project. Shagah Sex is 48,000 words—8,000 words longer than How to Quit Church. I’m so certain of its quality and marketability that I considered pitching it to a mainstream publisher. But then I paused to consider the years of labor to set up Starke & Hartmann. I took stock of all the designing tools and software God has placed so graciously into my hands. I considered all the suffering and disappointments of the past eleven years, and saw them as investments of my very being. How unwise, I thought, to give it all up now, with the goal so close. Why give the dream away to a cold, impersonal New York conglomerate when the breakthrough seems on the horizon? Starke & Hartmann is a company of the people, by the people, and for the people. It is God’s company, and God will complete what He has started.

How to Quit Church and my paperbacks, as well as my CD Part Time Sinner, continue to sell every day. We get new orders continually. I want you to be heartened by that. I am. But the flow is a trickle, not an avalanche. It’s been too small to make a living by. When I stopped publishing the newsletter six years ago, I asked my subscribers to become investors. I asked them to help finance my attempt to find a new audience for truth. I used the analogy of a deep-sea treasure hunter. The adventurer tells his investors that he is pretty sure gold lies at the bottom of the sea. He asks them to underwrite his daring attempt to uncover it. If the gold is there, everybody prospers. If not—well—"at least we tried."

When I became a deep-sea adventurer of sorts, many of my subscribers jumped ship. I know I could have kept publishing my newsletter, kept my subscribers happy, and kept feeding the few. But I wanted to do more than feed the few. It was time for me to take another chance. In 1999, I started a new job within my new job, becoming more evangelist than teacher. Not many liked the change. Most were only willing to support me only when I sent some product to their mailboxes. They were more concerned with being fed than finding others in need of food. And so it has been an even steeper uphill battle since 1999. I thank God for those who do share my vision. Without them, I’d have been delivering pizzas long ago. But I feel now that something wonderful and exciting is just around the corner.

You are part of the foundation of what is to come.

I am in the process now of submitting Shagah Sex to trusted editors. The book remains to be typeset and printed. This is a long, expensive process, and in the meantime, not much money is coming in. Income for an author—unless he gets an advance from a big company—is income deferred. The author must write the book first, then get paid—maybe. It’s a terrible way to make a living, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. No builder builds a house first, then asks to be paid at the customer’s pleasure; no, the builder sets the contract ahead of time to ensure his compensation.

Not so the writer. All profit is future and contingent upon the quality of and marketability of his product. And so I am wondering how ends will be met here until June of next year, the tentative publication date for Shagah Sex. There is so much work to be done until then. Is it a full-time job? Yes—for a whole crew of people. As it stands, I’m doing the work of seven or eight: I am writer, editor, graphic designer, proofreader, typesetter, publicist, and sales staff. I’m asking for your help.

I considered simply asking if God would give you the heart to help with expenses until Shagah Sex sees daylight. But better, I thought, to present you with an offer to buy books from Starke & Hartmann. Our company will get a good boost from any books sold. And so we want to make you an offer that—it is to be hoped—you cannot refuse. Because we wish to evangelize as desperately as pay our bills, we are offering you two sets of all my materials for the price of one set. In other words, you will be getting double the goods for your money. That’s eight books and 2 CD’s for $60, plus $4 shipping; half price on everything. I encourage you to take advantage of this offer. Not only will you have extra material to give to hungry and hurting friends, but Starke & Hartmann will get a needed shot in the arm, and Martin Zender (a 50% stockholder) will be able to pay his electric bill and concentrate on Shagah Sex.

I am not oblivious to the fact that this letter could fall into the hands of a wealthy individual with a fervency for evangelism. I would never stop such a person from contributing directly to this ministry, if God moved his or her heart. If anyone wants to take advantage of this Starke & Hartmann offer, then please make your check or money order for the amount on the flier to Starke & Hartmann, Inc.—and we thank you. If anyone wants to help the ministry directly, then please feel free to make out a check to Martin Zender, and mail it to the publisher.

It is potentially humiliating, asking this kind of thing so directly. But I’ve been underneath this desk enough to know that this is God’s work, not mine. His name is at stake, not mine. This isn’t about me being embarrassed, it’s about God fulfilling His purpose. I assure you that you could not contribute to a better cause. And I know that whether you decide to bless this outreach or not, the name of God will be magnified at His pace and by His means. Anything you give to help publish His good Name will return to you tenfold. I know this to be true. In our fatter years, Melody and I gave away hundreds, even thousands of dollars. God has never forsaken us, but has blessed us. It is our desire to see such years again, so that we can continue the circle of blessing.

On the heels of this letter, I am going to put some new items on the internet, exclusively for you. In 2000, I wrote an article that came to be called, "The Manifesto." It detailed my vision for evangelism. It is a grand vision, and it is as true today as the day I wrote it. It is a more formal and forceful piece of writing than this letter, so beware. I encourage you to read it. As you read, you will soon realize that I am either crazy or called. I assure you that it’s the latter. I hope you agree, and I pray that my vision for evangelism inspires you.

I have also decided to put up a few excerpts from Shagah Sex, excerpts that I hope will get you interested in the book, and enthusiastic about the promise it holds. I will also put up some of my old articles that I mentioned earlier in this letter. Would you like to read the controversial Plain Dealer article—the one that got Jim Strang in trouble—"When Christians Rescued Christ"? I’ll post it. I’ll put up the story about Barbie’s trials at Christmas; after all, ‘tis the season. Want to read about my favorite cat? It will be there. How about flies taking over the world? I’ll put that one up, too. I’ll even put up the first story that sold to the Plain Dealer, the one about not being able to tell my oldest son about Santa Claus. I’ll wait a couple of months before listing these things under their appropriate categories on the website proper. In the meantime, for the next few months, this material is exclusively yours. To access it, type www.martinzender.com/exclusive.htm  This will give you all the links. ("The Manifesto," because of its length and footnotes, is a PDF file.) You are certainly free to share the link with others, if you wish. May these writings provide you with hours of enjoyable, challenging reading.

I would also like to send you a copy of that first, harrowing talk in Windham, Ohio; yes, the much-dreaded message about Paul’s thorn. Someone actually made a bootleg recording of it—I assure you it wasn’t me. No one besides me has ever heard this tape, and I’m not even sure I’ve managed to listen to the whole thing. I’ll design a label for it and send you one when you contact us. Please be forgiving, as the tape quality is a bit rough, and the speaker is rougher still.

Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for giving me a reason to be. I thank God that He has put each of you where you are, for this hour. Melody and I are indebted to you for your support and encouragement. We would love to hear from you. You can write us at www.martinzender.com , or drop us a personal letter addressed to Starke & Hartmann, Inc. P.O Box 6473, Canton, OH 44706. We love you all, and the future, from here, looks blessed.

Yours in Christ,

Martin Zender