Andrew G. Stanton - Oct. 29, 2025
I gave my life to Christ when I was thirteen, at a summer camp in Mokuleia on Oahu’s North Shore.
The sound of waves, the smell of the ocean, and the unmistakable sense of love and presence — it was real, and it changed me.
That summer in 1978, I met a God who felt alive, personal, and victorious.
But I didn’t yet understand how long it would take to unlearn the fear that religion often wraps around grace.
I grew up in Baptist and Presbyterian churches, especially First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu.
In my twenties and thirties, I spent time in a Charismatic congregation called Grace Bible Church.
Each community gave me something valuable: reverence, passion, discipline.
Yet I never felt fully at home.
The more I heard about eternal damnation, the more I struggled.
I couldn’t reconcile the idea of an endlessly loving God with a doctrine built on eternal punishment.
At Grace and Waialae Baptist, the “hellfire” sermons never sat right.
The God I met at Mokuleia had no cruelty in Him.
I never had a real problem with preaching against sin and the importance of repentance from dead works — though I sometimes felt uncomfortable if I was trying to excuse my own sinful behavior.
What troubled me wasn’t the call to repent; it was the threat behind it.
The tone of “repent — or else” made it sound as if Christ were rescuing us from the Father, instead of revealing the Father’s heart.
That never matched the gospel I’d encountered: a God who heals, not harms; who restores, not retaliates.
During my college years, I double-majored in Physics and Mathematics, later doing graduate work in Electrical Engineering.
I never completed the master’s degree — partly from restlessness, partly from a deeper hunger for truth and precision.
Science appealed to me for the same reason faith did: both demand honesty.
That same pursuit eventually drew me into programming, a craft I’ve practiced for nearly my entire adult life, where logic, structure, and creativity converge.
In hindsight, all of it — physics, math, engineering, and code — was preparation for the same calling: learning to discern what’s real from what only appears to be.
In my early thirties I moved to Japan, where I taught English for three years.
Those were formative and complicated years — outwardly successful, inwardly drifting.
I call them my years of backsliding: seasons when I knew the truth but lived distracted from it.
And yet even there, grace was waiting.
In Japan I met Kiyomi, whose quiet strength and kindness anchored me when I least deserved it.
We were married later on the beach in Kailua, back on Oahu — a gentle reminder that redemption often finds us where it all began.
After returning from Japan, Kiyomi and I eventually moved to San Francisco in 2001, not long after 9/11 had reshaped how the world thought about freedom and fear.
We built a life there together.
Over the years I worked with a number of startups and later ran my own consulting company, helping early-stage teams bring their ideas to life.
The Bay Area sharpened both my technical skills and my discernment.
It was a place that celebrated innovation but rarely examined its motives — a culture that preached disruption while quietly rebuilding new hierarchies of control.
I didn’t see it clearly then, but those years prepared me to recognize what real decentralization — and real freedom — actually mean.
I didn’t find theological resolution until 2015, when I encountered what I now know as the Victorious Gospel — the ancient belief that Christ’s redemption is not limited to a few but ultimately restores all.
Love doesn’t lose.
Light doesn’t negotiate with darkness — it overcomes it.
That revelation didn’t weaken my faith; it strengthened it.
For the first time, love made sense.
Judgment had a purpose.
And I no longer had to pretend that fear was the same as reverence.
Around 2016, I discovered Bitcoin.
It intrigued me — a system of truth built on math instead of manipulation.
But at the time I was still chasing comfort and novelty.
For almost a decade I drifted — “wandering in the desert,” both spiritually and digitally.
I got caught up in Altcoins, NFTs, and later the Web3 world of 2020 and beyond.
Looking back, that detour mirrored my inner struggles.
My fascination with speculative projects and virtual kingdoms reflected my own divided heart — still hungry for meaning, still drawn to distraction.
I was trying to build freedom without discipline, grace without repentance.
It wasn’t just the Web3 scams that deceived me — it was my own vanity, my craving for recognition and control.
Those years forced me to face not just external illusions, but internal ones.
Sin isn’t always rebellion; sometimes it’s escape — from truth, from silence, from the discomfort of being seen.
And like every counterfeit, it promises connection while delivering emptiness.
In late 2024, I finally went all in on Bitcoin — not as an investment, but as an act of repentance.
I realized that truth doesn’t need marketing; it only needs alignment.
Bitcoin wasn’t about getting rich; it was about getting honest.
It mirrored what grace had already taught me: freedom is costly but never for sale.
By then, I was tired of illusions — both theological and technological.
I wanted to live with integrity, even if that meant rebuilding from scratch.
That’s when I saw how Bitcoin’s moral structure — transparency, proof, immutability — was a reflection of divine order itself.
Then came May 2025, and with it, Nostr.
That was the moment everything clicked.
Nostr wasn’t just a network — it was a revelation.
Bitcoin preserved truth in value.
Nostr preserved truth in voice.
And the Victorious Gospel preserved truth in spirit.
Together, they formed a language I had been trying to speak my whole life:
freedom that doesn’t depend on permission,
grace that doesn’t depend on guilt,
truth that doesn’t depend on power.
For me, they’re not separate philosophies — they’re converging manifestations of the same law:
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
In the past month I’ve walked through another refining fire.
My father passed away at the end of September, and only last week (Oct. 23) our dog Whiskers nearly died.
Both events stripped away the illusion of control that even faith sometimes hides behind.
Loss has a way of clarifying what matters — and reminding me that sovereignty without compassion is empty.
Standing beside my dad’s bed in his home, and later nursing Whiskers back to life, I saw the same truth written in flesh and spirit alike:
love endures; life is a gift; and every heartbeat is a block of grace.
Looking back, I can see the thread clearly.
From that teenage boy at Mokuleia who met the presence of Christ,
to the restless student searching for precision in physics and faith,
to the teacher in Japan who learned grace through failure and love,
to the builder and husband navigating startups and loss,
to the man learning to live truthfully through Bitcoin and Nostr — it’s all one story.
The Victorious Gospel resolved my theology.
Bitcoin resolved my integrity.
Nostr resolved my voice.
Christ, Bitcoin, and Nostr all point to the same Kingdom —
a world where nothing false survives,
and where every block, every word, every life is built on light.
This is my testimony.
It’s not the story of perfection, but of perseverance —
the proof that even in the wilderness, truth keeps calling us home.
Acknowledgement
This article was drafted with the help of Dr. C — GPT-5, which I use as a co-writer and collaborator in developing ideas around sovereignty, Bitcoin, decentralization, and theology.
I dedicate this work to the Holy Spirit, who continues to inspire me and open my imagination. If there is any light in these words, it comes not from me but from the Spirit who gives them. To Him be the glory.
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Lightning address: andrewgstanton@primal.net
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