On a Hebrew New Year, I remember when God first instated the calendar for His people during the Exodus out of Egypt; the first day of the first month of the year, 14 days before Pesach/Passover (Exodus/Shemot 12:2, 12:18; Leviticus/Vayikra 23:5). This year, it reminds me of past lives, like the ancient Jews had when they were slaves in Egypt, constantly in hard toil to churn out products for the ancient empire of Egypt – structures, monuments, and the things that build them, like bricks of mud and straw and the produce of pastures and fields to feed the kingdom (Exodus/Shemot 1:11-14; 5:7). Like them, I too, was enslaved in my past life, that is, my life before I came to believe in God and Christ. But unlike them, I never knew how enslaved I was to the ways of the world and my passions at the time.

Like many people, I had a normal job that I didn’t like and dreams I never saw fulfilled, and so I often escaped the tedium of everyday slavery with my greatest passion of the time, or rather, I should say addiction, because back in 2008, I lived and breathed motorcycles. I rode every chance I could, and in the frigid climate of the Upper Midwest in the States, I was often the last to stop using my motorcycle as my daily vehicle when the roads became too snow laden to ride safely. I was the first to get back on my bike in late winter when the roads would thaw just enough to let the two wheels of my motorbike keep their grip on the pavement.

I called myself a biker, a motorhead, a motorcyclist, a sport rider, but in retrospect, I would label myself as a motorcycle addict. My passion was not healthy, because I gave it priority over anything else. Most of my time and resources in my personal life was spent on motorcycles. It was my identity and made me feel fulfilled, though, really, motorcycling was my escape drug from the job I hated and an unfulfilled life of stress.

Having personal passions that you spend a majority of time on or allowing them to define your identity isn’t always a bad thing. Artists, writers, musicians, trades people, business owners, and the like, all spend a majority of their time and resources on their passions, often at the expense of personal relationships and other responsibilities. That is not always bad, because God did not make everyone to live as a family person and it may be their destiny to work passionately in their chosen field, but if you do have other responsibilities, like a family life or a job (even though you may hate it), you cannot let personal passions and projects overtake your responsibilities and ruin them. Not only is it bad for everyone involved, but also for your own well-being, because when you slip in sins, like the Second Greatest Commandment to love one another, you will also reap the penalties of sin (neglecting your family and willfully being lax in your job both break the Second Greatest Commandment to love one another; Matthew 19:19, 22:39, 5:43-44; Mark 12:31-33; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:13-14; James 2:8; Leviticus/Vayikra 19:18, 19:33-34; Deuteronomy/Devarim 10:19).

For me, motorcycling was not simply a harmless identity, but a harmful addiction. When I describe motorcycling to people, I say it’s the closest thing to flying without leaving the ground. When riding, I could feel the joy of taking off on a runway and flying free of the bounds of the world. It was my preference to ride bikes with no windshield or wide faring because they’d block the wind too much. I wanted to feel it against my body, rushing through the air like Superman in the clouds. And riding fast was all the better. It only made me the happier in that feeling of flight, while the danger of it seemed trivial, which by the way, excessive speeding on public roads can also break the Second Greatest Commandment because you put other people in danger (Matthew 19:19, 22:39, 5:43-44; Mark 12:31-33; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:8-10; Galatians 5:13-14; James 2:8; Leviticus/Vayikra 19:18, 19:33-34; Deuteronomy/Devarim 10:19).

In 2008, I had about a decade of touring around the country on my bikes, I lead an official motorcycle riding club for Triumph Motorcycles, and thought my life was leading to the racetrack to become a pro racer. Funny how your dreams go one way when God has a different plan.

It was also early in 2008 that I had strange feelings about something miraculous and unexplainable that happened years earlier in 2005. I remembered a radiant wonder that appeared out of nowhere in my dark bedroom early one morning - a golden sun-shining ring, like a clock. It was projected on my floor and ticked with a seconds hand, but I couldn’t understand where it came from. Waving my hand around it didn’t disturb it and when I put my hand directly over it, the shining clock projected right onto my hand. I remember clearly the projection flowed over the contours of my hand. Very strange, but it didn’t freak me out because I at least accepted there were spiritual things in the world. I felt calm and just thought it must mean something. I pondered sleepily for a minute in bed and moments later, I looked at the floor again and it was gone.

I had no explanations, but thought, maybe, I was running out of time. The clock was ticking just like any other analog clock, but in that moment, I had nothing more to go on and so I wrote it down in my journal and went back to life as usual. Sometime later, I sought help to understand the sign and someone suggested the shining clock foretold of a new beginning and prosperity because it happened in the morning and shone like sunlight, and to pursue that, I should stop trying to do so much and enjoy the richness of life and family more - simplify.

Years passed by and then it was January 2008 when for some reason or another, I began thinking about that clock I saw. This time I thought, maybe the world is running out of time, and maybe I needed to do something about it. But what?

Strange how those thoughts now ring true, but in 2008 I had nothing more to go on and it was again, back to life as usual. But it wouldn’t be life as usual for very long this time, because a few months later, at the end of April 2008, I got very strange signs or visions that I couldn’t explain. I knew they were definitely supernatural. I was at a health clinic to see about a rash when two people sitting in the chairs facing me left for their appointment. On their empty chairs, I saw a clear picture on each purple seat cushion as if an artist drew them there on the soft felt fabric – a fox curled up on one chair and the face of a monkey with an analog clock in one of its ears on the other. I even saw the time on the clock to be 9:10.

I had no idea what was going on, but I knew those people sitting in the chairs did not have images like that on the seat of their pants. The signs were well defined and couldn’t be natural. I stared at them for many minutes while I waited for my appointment. I didn’t believe in God or Christ or any religions for that matter back then, and there was another clock in the new signs. I wondered if they linked to the clock I saw in 2005. I had no explanation for these things, but I thought the fox image referred to my son, whose name means fox, and because the images were on soft purple fabric, something conveying comfort, I thought, maybe it goes with what the person told me about the clock of sunlight; that I should slow down and enjoy life more. So I thought the fox could mean I should find comfort in my son and spend more time with him. Other than that, I had no clue what the signs meant.

Today, I would pray and ask the Lord for guidance on them, but back then I couldn’t fathom God doing anything in my life. Yet somehow, for some reason, unknown to me, He was moving things in my life for a reason. These enigmatic, miraculous signs were important. I knew they meant something, but in hindsight, I realize God did things mysteriously because I wasn’t ready for what I later called “The Big Picture”; a truer blueprint of our existence that includes God and Christ. He was using these mysteries to prepare me for that Picture, because if a Christian had come up to me at that time and said, “God is moving you to believe,” I would have just gave a smile, silently saying, Oh sure but I don’t think so, and shut the door on him.

That was my response to the typical evangelist that came knocking on my door. I knew what they believed and I knew they wanted me to come to their church or group or whatever they were recruiting for, but being an independently minded and scientifically trained nonconformist, organized religion felt like they were offering me shackles and a straightjacket. Why should I accept chains when I sought freedom? I hated my job and longed to be a full-time artist and just ride motorcycles as fast as I could.

Creativity and flying on motorcycles were my happiness. But, of course, God knew that, and so He started to use my life’s path at the time to move me some more towards Him, as we'll see. Over the years, I started calling these quiet, uncertain, and not very normal signs and circumstances, “nudges.” God gives them to everybody, especially to those who are resistant to spiritual things of faith, because the less faith you have in the spiritual world, the less likely God will show you miraculous signs and wonders and force your faith with more concrete evidence of Him and spiritual things. But still, even with the faithful, God always speaks unclearly, as I have learned after decades of ministry (1 Corinthians 13:12), so after learning this, I do not give anyone too much benefit of doubt anymore if they claim to say they have direct and true words or guidance from God. The ways of the old prophets have long gone.

But thanks be to God, back in 2008, the signs I saw were made to have me inquire more about spiritual things, yet not be turned off by Christianity. When I tried to get help to understand these miraculous signs, I only got a small part of the picture. I wouldn’t know the connection the clock of sunlight had with the other signs, which also had a clock in them, until much later in 2008. I just thought I should stop trying to get out of the job I hated and enjoy more family time. I had no clue what God really had in mind for me.

Some more months passed by and my life was still pretty much the same. I was motorcycling as usual and preparing for a big summer tour to the West with some friends in my motorcycle club. I called it the Pacific Northwest Tour because I planned to make a big loop from Minnesota through Colorado, Arizona, Utah, stopping in Lake Tahoe at the edge of Nevada and California for a Triumph motorcycle rally, and then loop back home through the northern states in Oregon, Washington, Montana, and the Dakotas. These were areas I had not biked before, so I was looking forward to the new sights I’d see, like cruising straight through a giant redwood tree in northern California, viewing the red-brown agate layers of mesa country and the Grand Canyon in Arizona and Utah, and running the winding mountains and foggy forests of Colorado, Washington State and Montana. It was going to be a great motorcycle tour, but God had different plans.

We started off on July 12th in a seemingly normal way, as planned; a small group of some of the most active riders in my Triumph club. Not so normal, though, was one of us, the rider of the maroon Victory Vision doubled up his cargo space by adding a pair of leather saddlebags on his bike (foreground bike in photo below).

You can’t tell from the picture how strange this was, but the Vision is a full touring bike with built-in hard saddle and top bags, so putting another pair of bags on top made the saddle bags stick out like an extra-wide load transport, the kind that go slow with warning flags and flashing lights, hauling things like whole houses and giant industrial machines.

He said he needed the luggage space for the tour, after all, we were expected to ride for two weeks, and so we started off. It wasn’t long before we found the Vision rider made a critical touring mistake with his extra-wide load, doubled-up saddle bags. The wind resistance they made halved his fuel efficiency, so we had to stop for gas after much less distance. My tour route did not plan for a bike with half the range, so at one point between fuel stops he ran out of gas in the middle of farm fields around us for miles. One of us had to run to a gas station to bring back a small gas can to get him going again.

Though it was slower going, we made it to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado, our first major area of good mountain riding, without too much trouble (below, our bikes stopped for photos on a peak in Rocky Mountain National Park).

The ride coming down the mountains as we exited the other side of the park was enjoyable, but perhaps too much fun for a sport rider, because as I took off ahead of the group after traffic thinned out, I was racing down the mountain when all of a sudden my bike lost power and shut off. I came to a stop as the terrain flattened and parked on the side of the road near an intersection with another road. My group soon joined me on the side of the road wondering what happened. The electronics would not turn on and the bike would not start, and so I thought we’d be in trouble being far from mechanical help and any major towns.

As one of the Triumph riders and I looked over the ignition wires, we found the problem was a broken wire, so he did a quick patch and we fixed the problem. A roadside repair is not so uncommon for a motorcyclist, but very, very strange was when we were fixing the bike, someone coming from the intersecting road approached us and recognized another of our Triumph riders. He was a friend of his from back in Minnesota and funny thing is, they were both surprised to see each other out in the middle of wild Colorado over a thousand miles away from home. Unknown to my friend, his friend had scheduled a camping trip at a place down the road. Isn’t that interesting? My bike got shut down right at the correct moment and place to meet this person.

And even more interesting was they worked out a deal to take the Vision rider’s extra saddle bags back to Minnesota for him. So as we finished fixing my bike, I found our problems were solved and we got on our way again at full speed and in good spirits. It would have been nice to get some photos at the intersection, but it never occurred to me to take any photos when we were trying to fix my bike. In the moment, I thought it was mighty strange luck to meet a friend out in the middle of nowhere who saved us from having a bad trip, especially the Vision rider, because we needed to worry about him running out of fuel between stops. We might not have even made it in time for the start of the rally at Lake Tahoe if he didn’t get rid of those extra saddle bags (below, photo of us in Arizona without the extra-wide load on the Vision; second photo is my bike).

Years later, when I remembered this trip, I knew God stopped my bike at exactly the right moment, and got my friend’s friend to schedule his trip at the right place, AND got him to come down the road at the right moment to see us at the side of the road, so our trip was saved from a serious over packing mistake. I didn’t believe in God or Christ at the time, but God definitely had a hand in how everything worked out.

A skeptic would say it was just great blind luck and circumstance, dictionary serendipity, but if you think about what needs to happen to align everything just right, at just the right times, you’d have to be pretty illogical to think it was just blind luck or coincidence. How can two friends that didn’t know each other’s plans get positioned at the right place and time over a thousand miles from home to meet each other? And how can my bike break down and stop rolling to park at exactly the right place? All so the Victory rider could get rid of the saddle bags that were ruining the trip.

At the time, I didn’t know that the Vision rider was a Christian, nor that another of our Triumph riders was Christian as well, nor that the Triumph rider with the friend who found us was not a believer. But now I see that God worked things out, using people whether they believed in Him or not, because the Christians in our group prayed for the trip to be blessed, and so it was. God heard them and did bless us so that our problems would be worked out. So remember, even though we make bad decisions that could really ruin something, God can help us out and even fix things and eliminate our problems. I see this as God’s promise in the New Testament, “And we know that God works together all things for the good of those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).

This promise is for those who believe in and love God - He will work all things, even bad things, for the good of those who love Him. This is something you should keep in mind when you think about destiny, finding your soul mate, or pursuing your life’s interests. You don’t need to go searching like crazy or do everything possible to “manifest” your life’s dreams (something that is popular in certain sects and teachings that lead people into very bad spiritual habits). I talked about this unnecessary, rampant seeking of destiny in Practical Romance Matters. You don’t have to date even a handful of people to find your soulmate, because what I’ve seen of God’s hand in things is that it is fruitless to constantly or franticly seek things out. It is often counterproductive, and worse, shows lack of faith. Also, manifesting your own idea of destiny by sheer will and effort is not real destiny. That’s just trying to make your own reality.

God’s destiny is preplanned even before we are born (Psalm/Tehillim 139:16; Jeremiah/Yirmiyahu 1:5), and often requires His divine orchestration and help. It’s what I call real serendipity; great blessing and circumstance that is not dependent on random luck, like that dictionary serendipity I mentioned. That means you cannot make God’s destiny come true by your own efforts. You need God to make it happen. I didn’t know that on our bike tour, but I definitely thought the roadside serendipity was strange, even supernatural, and little did I know, we’d see even more strange happenings from God in the following days.

The day after Rocky Mountain National Park, we exited Colorado in its southwest corner through some small winding back roads into Utah. It was hot in the desert, but a lot of fun riding out in abandoned small twisting desert roads. But then, somewhere on those roads, my bike’s gear shifter peg broke off (photo below).

However, I could manage it ok by shifting with the stub that was left. It didn’t break the trip, but soon afterwards, my transmission got stuck in high gear. It wouldn’t shift up or down anymore. That definitely would have been a trip killer for most bikes, even one with a powerful, large capacity engine like mine had. If you don’t know much about transmissions, a low gear, usually first or second, is needed to start moving from a stop because most engines do not produce enough power to start moving a vehicle in higher gears. If you try, you will stall the engine and it will shut down.

My bike got locked into fifth gear, the highest, but because I modified the engine with a supercharger, it had enough power to get the bike moving in high gear without stalling, though doing so put heavy strain on the clutch (the parts that connect the engine to the gears that drive the wheel(s)). Most bikes would have burnt out the clutch quickly, and so would not be able to move well. Another trip killer, but again, my bike was upgraded with a clutch designed for high power. And so, I decided we could keep going to attend the rally at Lake Tahoe, but afterwards, I would go home instead of make a tour of the upper west states.

This was because being stuck in top gear, my bike would want to maintain high speeds. That made the kind of riding we did more dangerous. Though I could maintain moderate speeds by working the engine power with the clutch, doing so put more strain on the clutch and required more conscious maintenance of the clutch that made riding less enjoyable. My bike in this condition was really only best for a long, open straight line, which I did take advantage of after the Tahoe rally. The Vision rider and I went home on the shortest, quickest route possible, while the other two in our group decided to do their own tour of the upper states.

We were able to enjoy great riding and scenery in Arizona and Utah before we got to Tahoe (photos below), but I was only able to do half the trip and my bike was put out of commission for nearly a year afterwards because the clutch was burned out and I needed to replace the transmission and ignition. I might have repaired the bike much faster, but because I had another I could use, I didn’t hurry with repairs. At the time, I thought my bike’s breakdowns were because it was heavily modified. The stock parts weren’t designed to handle the power of a supercharger, and so it didn’t occur to me there could be a divine nudge in not being able to finish the trip.

In retrospect, I would have to say that God prevented a full tour because He was in the process of moving my focus away from motorcycling and towards a new life. I did continue a lot of riding for some years after 2008 and even did a few years of racing at a race track, but in the autumn of 2008 just a few months after this tour, I’d come to understand what the unusual signs and clocks meant. It’d put me on a new path away from the things that enslaved me, just like the ancient Israelites were put on a new path out of slavery in the Exodus.

My path out was much slower since it took some years before I stopped sport touring and racing, but it was all because of God why I left the world of constant motorcycling. If you think about it, my Exodus path was really more similar to the Jews than not, because, though they got out of slavery (Egypt) quickly, they, too, were slow to come out of the pagan lifestyle they were used to in Egypt. The slow route shows how patient God is with our maturing out of things that aren’t good for us, but what did it for me?  Why would a nonreligious, independent, scientifically minded nonconformist pick up the Cross of Christ, a symbol of religious conformity? Why did I decide to go follow Moses/Moshe into the Red Sea to escape Egypt, so to speak?

It was the middle of October in 2008, a few months after the motorcycle tour, when someone mentioned a friend named Natalie being described as fast paced, always running around and talking quickly, just like a monkey. That clicked a switch in my mind and I remembered the symbols on the chairs. I thought, “Could the monkey in the signs refer to Natalie? And the clock in its ear pointing to 9:10, could it point to a time associated with her?” I pondered and it struck me that 9:10 could refer to when I first met her, not 9:10 on a clock, but 9/10 on a calendar, so I went to some digital photos I had. I knew they were dated about 10 days after I met Natalie for the first time, so I checked the date stamps.

They were taken on September 20th, or 9/20, so take 10 days off and we get 9/10, exactly matching the 9:10 in the sign with the monkey. The sign actually showed the date I met Natalie many months before we met. My interest was peaked and I got another hunch. I thought the monkey could also refer to her being born in a Year of the Monkey according to the Chinese Zodiak, which assigns animals to years according to a 12 year cycle. However, I was apprehensive to all of a sudden ask her when she was born. I’d have to bring up the signs and then she’d think I was crazy.

But I knew the signs were important and now I found they were prophetic, which did freak me out, being a nonreligious person and never having experienced such a thing before. So I talked to Natalie and confirmed she was indeed born in a Year of the Monkey. The monkey sign definitely referred to her, and so I had to let her know everything about why I asked when she was born. I expected to be branded a lunatic, but her response surprised me. She simply said it must be God.

Then my distaste for organized religion kicked in and I was going to dismiss her interpretation. I knew she was a devoted Christian, so I thought, of course she would say it was all God. But she also said, she had been praying to let God use her to help people who were searching for or needed Him. Hmmm, I thought, maybe she’s right, and furthermore, it was my habit to note the meaning of names, so I looked up what Natalie meant and I was surprised to see it means Christmas Day, from Natalia and the Latin “natale domini” meaning Christmas Day.

Now I was feeling very spooked. Too many things were lining up to point to God and Christ, it was as if I was handed a lottery ticket and one by one, I saw all the numbers lining up to win the jackpot. It would be foolish to just throw it away, so I dismissed my dislike for religion and let Natalie get me a couple books from the library about Christianity.

Her hand must have been guided by God, because more things began to click in the first book she gave me, Just Like Jesus. She never read the book, but recognized the author so she selected it. The primary message in it was God wants us all to be more like Jesus, whom I now refer to as Yeshua (see why in The Actual Names of God and Christ). The book pointed out how the number three is linked to Yeshua, which I thought interesting because of how I like any number with 3 in it. I even rode triple cylinder Triumph motorcycles. I never understood why I liked threes. It just felt right to me.

And then I thought about other things and preferences in my life that strangely linked to Christ, like the mural I painted on my motorcycle tank years before (photo below). It depicted a dragon blowing fire on a shield with a Christian cross on it; basically it showed a very Christian theme of evil attacking the cross, but its fire was repelled by the cross and shield.

Why did I pick such a Christian theme when I thought I was just painting things that fit the theme I wanted on my bike; that of medieval armor and being a crusader. I didn’t put dragons in the artwork to fit any Christian themes, but simply liked dragons and the fantasy genre in general. For me, dragons were like dinosaurs to a five year old. They were amazing, awe inspiring beasts.

And then I thought about my name, which I had changed some years ago because I wanted to go back to my birth name. My name was changed when I was a teen after my step-father adopted me and I took a more typical American name, but after my parents separated, I felt no connection to my step-father, so I wanted go back to my birth name to honor my true father whom I had reconnected with.

In changing my name back, my first and middle names became Ty Alexander. Ty, being my familiar name that family always called me, and short for Tyrone, while I chose Alexander to match my son’s middle name. I didn’t choose Ty Alexander for any special reasons other than personal family ones, but when I thought about it more as I was learning about Christ, I understood I changed my name to "Sovereign Savior," because Ty or Tyrone means sovereign and Alexander means savior.

I was seeing even more numbers lining up in a spiritual lottery as I learned about Christ. Why in the world would I align so many personal things with Christ? I was not a Christian yet, even when I was learning about Christ in these first days. I did not believe in Christ on the cross and all those things I shunned from overeager evangelists. But now I was seeing things making up my own personal life and identity lining up with Christ, and so I accepted what the book was telling me. God must really want me to be like Christ, whom is our true Sovereign Lord and Savior.

The more I learned and the more I pondered, the more I saw how my life and preferences were lining up with Christ. I thought it was impossible, but being a very logical, scientifically minded person, I knew so many alignments could not happen by accident or coincidence. This was no dictionary serendipity. This was God’s serendipity – real destiny, preordained and pre-orchestrated in real world things, and even in myself, long before I came to believe.

When I finished the books Natalie gave me, I came to understand what all the signs meant. The fox on purple did not mean, “Find comfort in my son,” but meant, “Find comfort in My Son,” that is, in the Son of God, our Lord God and Sovereign Mashiach Yeshua (Christ Jesus). It was no accident the signs appeared on purple fabric, because that also links to Christ in that purple is the color of royalty and the color of a robe He was given when He was beaten and crucified, “The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on His head. They clothed Him in a purple robe and went up to Him again and again saying, ‘Hail, King of the Jews!’” (John 19:2).

The monkey and clock showing 9:10 pointed to Natalie or “Christmas Day,” who God used to bring me to believe in Christ, just like she asked Him to do. Her name even linked to faith in Christ and His birth. And the ticking clock of sunlight? It really was about a new beginning and prosperity, maybe not material prosperity, but definitely spiritual prosperity and a new life with Christ. My feelings years ago that it also referred to the world running out of time and that I needed to do something about it were also true. I didn’t realize it would mean being anointed as God’s priest and teacher for the times we’re in now at the end of this age when the clock truly is ticking away for what remains of God’s grace and patience for a world full of sins and darkness.

I hope my personal testimony helps you realize and accept the true blueprint of reality, that Big Picture I mentioned, because if you don’t believe in Christ, I’m certain He has given you many nudges like He did me. God, Christ, and all those spiritual things in the Bible are as real as the mind and body you have now. May you move forward with a life in Christ like I did when the meaning to all the signs I got were revealed. When I read the Christian books Natalie gave me, I accepted the truth to her and began my new life as a Christian minister.

And if you already believe, then may you move farther into truth and righteousness with me and our Lord in Christ. It was for no small reason God gave me so many signs and wonders to get me to believe, and it’s for good reasons why He continued to give me many, many more real world signs and wonders in the sky above and the earth below as I walked with Him through the years. If you’d like to learn more and see how God led me after 2008, then please go to Predestined.

God bring you all to greater wisdom and sanctification, through Mashiach Yeshua. Amen.