Lambert: Lately my colleague Lawrence Hoppis and I have been seeking close friends of mine I could “interview.”

The first interview we did turned out well.

http://ldolphin.org/audio/LL1.mp3

Would you, James, be willing to take part? This is not about you or me—the focus is Jesus.

How did you and I “meet”? What is your background? How did you come to know Jesus? Do you have any advice for seekers?

James Fielder: Sure.....I am "technically challenged" and ashamed to admit I don't know how to make a recording on a computer.

So I will launch off on email writing.......and you can send additional questions or whatever and I can expand on it, if that is OK with you.

Lambert: How did you and I "meet"? After I got saved around 40 years of age, 1999, somehow the Lord led me on the internet to the teachings of You and Ray. I was always traveling the world non-stop and the Lord used your and Ray's teachings, along with the Bible to "teach" me as a I traveled.

James Fielder: At the time, I was working in Nigeria. I would work a month on and then have a month off. They would fly me to the US or wherever I wanted to go to have my time off.

Of course, you and I have never "met" face to face, but one day I was in Houston studying Esther and I had some thoughts on it so I wrote to you and asked some questions. Of course, I was wrong and you set me straight. So our friendship started that way, me writing questions from time to time and you teaching me and it expanded from there. Since I was always travelling, I did not have a steady way to "learn" except Bible, books, internet, etc. I was not "schooled" in a normal manner down at a church house. I was in Nigeria or Qatar or New Zealand or wherever, and I would ask you the questions if I needed to learn something.

My Background: I was born to a driller that worked on rigs. I went to 12 schools before graduating. We lived anywhere from Texas to Nevada to Mississippi, depending on the rig work and the types of wells my father was drilling. Sometimes oil, some gas, and in Nevada he drilled some of the large diameter nuclear weapons test holes back in the day when they put the bombs deep underground and then blew them up. I ended up graduating in Houston. Got a Petroleum Engineering scholarship at Texas A&M. Got my degree and then went to work.

In the summers while in college I would work offshore or on land in Texas in the oilfields.

I went to a church maybe 5 or 10 times in my entire life as a kid. My only thoughts were the Noah story had to be rubbish, too hard to get all those animals on a boat. And I wondered why this old man up front was yelling at me that I was going to hell. I was just a little kid, I had no clue what I had done to go to hell. So there was little "religion" in my life, zero as I got older.

After graduation, I went to work for oil companies and spent from 1981 to 2015 working mostly international projects from Africa to the Mid East, China, Canada, South America, New Zealand, etc. I think I drilled in 12 countries and visited around 36 total........some projects offshore, some in jungles, some arctic, some desert. I worked in China, Canada, Qatar, New Zealand, Colombia, Trinidad, Barbados, Sudan, Angola, Gabon, Nigeria, Tunisia, Ecuador, North Sea UK, and US (Texas, Louisiana, California one well in Santa Barbara channel). Along the way, I had two wives and two divorces, first a Brit and the second a Colombian. Two children - one boy, one girl. And every possible sin known to man, uncountable.

How Did I come to Know Jesus? I am not sure when the exact moment was I was saved. I got very sick in Nigeria one night. Bad bacteria in the stomach. I remember falling on my knees by the bed and saying "God save Me". I didn't ask for Jesus or anything like that......just "God". I spent a day on a drip taking Cipro and I was Ok. When I got back to the US, I knew I was in big trouble. I had a son out of wedlock a few years before and I knew I was headed to hell. I was wandering around a book store in Houston and I ran across John Hagee's book from Daniel to Doomsday. I go it. Took it home, read it and "found out" about the rapture. I said, wow, living people going to heaven, sign me up for that deal. My dad had died a few years earlier and that was horrible and I hated the thought of death. I can remember being on the floor one night begging Jesus to save me at my house after reading the book.

No bright lights flashed and no bells rang, so I continued on with my plans. I was headed to Montana for vacation on my days off. As I drove through New Mexico and Arizona these thoughts would flash through my mind......question, what about Adam and Eve? Answer, yes it it true. Etc. Every night I would stop at a motel and read the Bible all the way to Missoula and Glacier Park. Every question I asked, the answer was "there". I drove back to Texas, went to my sister's church, walked down the aisle, got baptized. And then I went back to work in Africa. I would read and read and read, learning more and more. Then Ray and your websites popped up to "help".......more books, etc. etc.

Seeker advice - The way I "think" is if someone is "Seeking"......God has already started to "draw" them in. He is there waiting. The one big thing I think about seekers is they have to admit they are evil. In today's world "sin" doesn't register in their minds as "pure evil". "Sin" is like a little bad you did. To get saved you have to admit to God you are evil and you need saving. Somebody has to save you from hell. If a seeker were to come to me, I would say......"Look, you have done wrong, you have done evil. And you are going to hell, if you don't get to Jesus and beg Him to save you."

Send me more questions, will answer as needed, if we are not raptured in the next couple of days.

Lambert: 1. When we first “met” you were, I think, working in Qatar in a natural gas refinery? I was amazed at the technology and the ships (which I hastily read up on do I would not appear too dumb to you). You have travelled extensively before, during, and since college and when you retired in 19?? you were very experienced in the Petroleum Industry at all levels. When I ask you a question you always write back with first hand knowledge of reserves, forecasts, and the state of the industry world wide. You do know what you are talking about! I was in awe of you from the beginning.

James Fielder: At the "very first" I was in Nigeria........later I went to Qatar. I was the Drilling and Completion Manager for three offshore platforms that fed gas to a LNG plant onshore to liquify the gas and tanker it to other places in the world. I spent six years in Doha on the Persian Gulf, then went to run the drilling for oil sands in Canada (where I met Jim H.). Traveled since birth......non stop........chasing rigs with my father........then on to my own career.

First trip to China in 1984, Sudan was 85, UK 85, on and on, then Ecuador, Angola, Tunisia, etc. etc........and then never stopped. Since I retired in 2015, I spent about 2 years fighting for my daughter, etc in Boca Raton Florida and then moved back here to Texas the last two years.

Lambert: 2. Did you have any formal “religion” in your childhood? Where did you grow up? What were your parents like?

James Fielder: Moved about every six months as a child until high school. Lived in small towns in Texas, Las Vegas (twice), Tonopah, Ely, one little town in Missouri, Laurel Mississippi, Houston. I can remember a few trips to church at six in a small Texas town. After that, almost zero. Father, Big strong, smart, worked up the chain to head up the rig in the field, high school education........saved?? I don't know. Mother, a little crazy, a strange person.......child of the depression, supposedly baptized long ago in western texas......some mental issues. Both started out on farms as kids.......mother picking cotton, father, watermelons and beans.

Lambert: 3. You seem to have had a healthy fear of God well before you met Jesus? You seem to have been searching all your life?

James Fielder: I knew there was something wrong with the world. You work and work, and then it collapses. So I started reading self help books, Zen, etc .....looking for answers. None. I always took a Bible in the bag no matter where I traveled, like a "superstition" or something. I would read bits, but it made little sense. Sure, you understood the law......don't kill or steal.......but no understanding of Jesus as God in the flesh, at least not for me. Not until I was saved.

Lambert: 4. I remember when the refinery in Colombia (?) —you were in charge of—was closed you sent me a list of men you had worked with at every level, for prayer. I was glad to pray with you for each person. Do you keep track of any of the guys who once worked for you? In the industry are there many who know Jesus that you are aware of?

James Fielder: The drilling business is pretty rough crowd.......oil field workers...... women chasing, etc. I spent until 40, chasing the money, women, etc. I keep in touch with just a few, brothers mostly. Everyone else "faded away or disappeared". I send out hundreds or thousand of emails with studies, etc.......but it is pretty much a dead response.

Lambert: 5. Your travels have taken you everywhere and knowing life in other cultures surely has given you a rich legacy and stretched your world-view?

James Fielder: Seen a lot......Africa is a hell hole......Europe, must history, but harsh people.....Canada, nice, kind, blind most of them, nicest culture I was ever in.....South America, Mary's army, vast hordes of extremely poor people, tens of millions of poor.....Persian Gulf, Arabs, kind enough most of them, but lie and steal and mean to poor people. China, Asia, a different world, work hard, smart,,,,but hard to relate to them for me......especially inside Red China......Hong Kong, I could relate, but inside PRC, different folks.

Lambert: 6. Where is your daughter now and do you see her much? She must be in college about now?

James Fielder: Daughter is 10, lives with me......fifth grade. Son is out of college, works in community development in Texas small town.

Lambert: 7. You are currently retired living in Texas?

James Fielder: Yes, outside Houston........at least for now. Plan to move to smaller place if no rapture........Houston is growing out into this area now.....big freeway, etc getting too close, crime and problems coming soon enough.

Lambert: 8. You read widely especially in the Bible and apologetics. You are way more savvy than most preachers I know. You must pray a lot and value your personal walk with Jesus above all else?

James Fielder: I read alot, that is for sure. I pray a good deal but not enough..... Jesus.....awesome.....beyond awesome. How do you describe Someone that lives in eternity and spoke a universe into being and then became a man and died to save humans. Mystery......fearsome......loving.....human words cannot describe Him.

Lambert: 9. What do you see is the state of the nation having seen changes and trends over a lifetime?

James Fielder: I think we are at an inflection point........when/if Trump falls, the nation may fall or decay terribly. The globalists, open borders, apostate church situation, debt, is a death trap for all the world. It leads to hell and destruction. If the Marxist powers take control, you can fold up "the old America". I have considered moving out of the US, but I see no "good" places left. There is a big problem now with all "normal truth" leaving.......if a boy does not know he is a boy....big problems have arrived. And there is an anger rising in this nation. You see it in politics but it also in the culture, some cities now are gangs of dope runners or hoodlums.....this is a vast problem. We/the US can end up like Nigeria or Bogota......murder everywhere, vast violent evil cities of poor by the millions.

Email James Fielder: mailto:jlfdrilll@aol.com

October 22, 2019