Our Beginning

Shortly after writing the revision of the Ten Commandments, Dan attended his church’s Start Meeting, intended for newcomers to the church to acquaint them with the teachings of the Bible and Jesus.

After being led down through the catacombs of the church, Dan and a small group of people arrived at the cafeteria, where several tables were set in a semi-circle with a few tables across the back wall where a half dozen church members were already seated.

Everyone took a seat and waited for the speaker to arrive. Much to Dan`s surprise, the pastor entered the room. Dan was surprised because he didn`t think that he would be leading such a small group, as he was the head of the church.

After introducing himself to everyone, the pastor began by saying that we should start from the beginning with the Ten Commandments. First, he asked if anyone knew how many of the Ten Commandments were meant for mankind to God.

After looking around the room and seeing no one raise their hand, Dan raised his hand and answered that the first 4 Commandments were meant for man to God.

Everyone seemed surprised that Dan knew the answer, including the pastor, who then asked one of the members in the back to open their Bible to the Ten Commandments. Dan responded that there was no need to look them up as he knew them by heart. The pastor did not believe Dan and challenged him to recite them.

So Dan recited them almost word for word from the newly revised version he had recently penned. By the time Dan got to the ninth Commandment, the pastor stopped him as the time was almost up for the class, he then went around the room and asked the newcomers what had brought them to the church in the first place.

When one of the women responded that God had brought her there to be a witness, Dan nearly fell out of his chair. She told everyone that she had died on the operating table and that God had then filled her with a light and told her he was bringing her back to be a witness.

When Dan heard this, he was shocked to think that out of this room of around 20 people, God had spoken directly to 3 of them. There was the lady who God meant to be a witness, there was the pastor who often told of how God had spoken to him, directing him to find and save a church and then there was Dan, to whom God had given the Blueprints to DIFY.

After making his first communion, Dan didn’t attend church for decades. It was only after what had been a very trying year in 2015 that he prayed for the first time early on that Christmas morning. As soon as he fell to his knees and began to pray, it was as if God was waiting for him, Dan describes it as if God had bushwhacked him.

It had all started earlier that year on a cold February night. Dan was doing sales in the neighboring province of Ontario from Quebec, where Dan had moved back to from the East Coast after living there for 16 years. He had left the province of Quebec for over 20 years and vowed he would never live there again, in large part because of the language laws and politics. Although he did visit often, as most of his family was still there.

When Dan`s mother had a stroke and was left suffering from Vascular Dementia, he brought her to live with him in Nova Scotia so he could care for her there. But after a year, she could no longer bear being apart from her other children, so Dan brought her back to Montreal to care for her and his two sick brothers there. Fortunately, he was able to sublet the apartment directly above his sister, who cared for their brothers.

After caring for his mom for more than 10 years, she had a second fall, re-fracturing her hip and pelvis and her disease had progressed to the point that Dan had to place her in a home. Again, he was fortunate, in that he found her a home on the next street so he could still easily care for her daily.

So on that February night, Dan was returning from a sales call that had gone very late and was racing home to tuck his mom in as she would often refuse to eat or even take her meds if he was not there. With her also being a diabetic, Dan needed to make certain she would eat before going to sleep so she would not go hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) during the night.

He was in the middle of nowhere on a long stretch of highway, with not another car or any houses in sight, when out of nowhere he heard what sounded like trumpets blasting across the sky.

As he turned the car stereo down and then off, the sounds grew louder, stretching across the sky, blasting from above. Different tones and sound levels emanated from many points across the skyline from one end to the other. When Dan lowered the car window to hear better, there was an extremely sweet smell and taste in the air and it was also very warm as if he was in a tropical climate, while the sounds of the trumpets continued to grow even louder. Dan has compared the sound of what he heard that night to what he imagined a high-quality Dolby Atmos 35.2 surround-sound stereo system might sound like, turned up very loud.

As incredible as this all seemed, considering it was a very cold Canadian February night, Dan did not stop his car to investigate or even attempt to record things; he just kept on motoring towards his mother.

He never really thought much more about it after that night. But the seed must have been planted because ten months later, on that Christmas morning after what had been a very miserable year, Dan did fall to his knees and pray in sincerity for the first time in his life.

The instant Dan got on his knees, closed his eyes and began to pray, God was waiting for him and hit him with a light and an energy that nearly picked him up off the floor. The feeling was obviously like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was a combination of pure energy, calmness, warmth and shock all at once.

Dan had originally prayed to God about DIFY Community Store, an idea he had to open up a store that would benefit the community with things to save people money, like TV antennas, do-it-yourself haircutters, etc.

Instead of a store, God filled Dan’s mind with thoughts & words and left him the Blueprint for DIFY Religion. He also told Dan that DIFY would transcend borders and religions. At the same instant, He impressed into Dan’s brain the following three lines: we are all his children, we are all equal in His eyes & He wants us all to play on this paradise that He has created for us. The whole incident lasted for a minute or it could have been 30 minutes. Time seemed to stand still.

Afterward, Dan was left quite overwhelmed, as anyone could imagine. He didn`t know where to turn or how he could start. He didn’t even know anyone who attended church.

A couple of days after his epiphany, Dan was still almost in a daze and very much overwhelmed but he still had to be there for his mom. So while he was caring for her on that evening, a voice from the back of his head told him to tell an acquaintance whose mother was also at the residence that God had spoken to him.

Dan fully expected Mary-Lynne to laugh in his face, but rather than laughing at him, she told Dan that it sounded like what had happened to a friend of hers. She said he was driving down the road one day and God spoke to him. He had told Mary-Lynne that God said that he should find and save a church, which he did.

She suggested that Dan speak with him and that they had much in common. After Dan asked her where the church was located and she told him. Dan was astonished; it was the same church he had been baptized in and had also done his first communion in. By the time the pastor ended up saving the church, it had been abandoned for many years and was scheduled for demolition.

Dan remembers his first communion because his mother had taken him by bus across the whole city to get the church and he acted up the whole way, crawling under the seats, etc. For whatever reason, she wanted him to do it at that church but it would have been much easier for her to bring him to a church in their new neighbourhood.

So after a couple of weeks, Dan built up his courage and went to speak with Mary-Lynne`s friend, the pastor. When they met and Dan told him that God had spoken to him also, the pastor asked Dan what God had said to him, but Dan was still uncomfortable talking about it, so he just muttered something about DIFY.

Dan ended up attending services at the church every Sunday for 2 years. He had a feeling of being connected to and at home in the church. He learned quite a bit from the teachings of this pastor and was grateful to him for that. That was up until the morning that Dan’s mother passed away.

On that Sunday morning, Dan had waited until after service to speak with the pastor, hoping for some consolation from him but rather than comforting Dan, the pastor saw Dan waiting for him and took off out the back door.

After that day in the basement, the pastor distanced himself from Dan and avoided him. Perhaps his ego was bruised, or perhaps he knew that the plans God had left Dan did not coincide with his own beliefs about Jesus. Regardless, Dan never returned to that church again.

A few months after his epiphany, Dan did some research online about the sounds of the trumpets from the sky that he heard. He found that there had been a handful of recordings from around the world of what were being referred to as the Sky Trumpets. After doing even more research, he found that the sound of the horns that he heard were closer to that of shofars, which were horns from biblical times.

There are several recordings of the Sky Trumpets and different explanations on YouTube, although none of the recordings seem as loud or clear as what Dan had heard that February night and most of the explanations seemed rather dismissive.

As far as DIFY Religion is concerned, it was only after the recent political upheaval that Dan decided to go forward with the religion. He had dragged his heels for years after writing the Book of DIFY, which he had completed in the two years following his epiphany. He had originally sent the manuscript to about 30 publishers and agents but it was rejected; big surprise, nobody was interested in publishing a book about a new religion and a person who claimed that God had spoken to him and given him a plan to save the world.

Years later, when he started the charity, Dan had first thought to name it after the religion, but his family and friends protested and let it be known that they didn’t want to be part of any kind of religion. Dan needed their help and support, so he reluctantly called it DIFY Charity and put the religion aside until now.

Dan (left) with DIFY Charity client, Steve.

Dan knew that the time for DIFY would eventually come. The day when the world appeared ready to rip itself apart at the seams. When people had had enough of the old traditional religions and the self-serving politicians who kept on offering more of the same divisive rhetoric that worked only for the few.

Perhaps by that point, he hoped that people might be ready for a fresh start and consider a new, pragmatic, secular and forgiving religion. A religion to replace all other religions and one that offers concrete solutions to our biggest problems today and a God-given plan for all of our tomorrows.

Truth be told, had the political climate not changed so drastically and so rapidly, DIFY Religion would probably still be sitting on the shelf waiting for a different right moment. While Dan would have been more than content to wait and bide his time while keeping a low profile as he continued to work at the charity.

After all, who in their right mind wants to be the target of ridicule and hate? Which will undoubtedly be a byproduct of Dan coming forward with his testimony and the new DIFY Religion?