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Email: "From Pornographer to Family Media: A Web Developer’s Conversion"

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BY LifeSiteNews.com By Patrick B. CraineJune 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The former owner of a multi-million dollar pornography business is now sharing his testimony about how he left the industry and found faith in Christ, and how he is now using his skills to advance God’s glory through Christian, family-friendly media.Jeff Myers, whose porn sites had hosted millions of images and thousands of hours of video, shared his story on The 700 Club, a live program for the Christian Broadcasting Network.  “My life was a disaster. I was a drug-addicted, alcoholic pornographer that ruined millions of lives,” he told The 700 Club.  “[God]‘s taken my life and turned it around. He loves me in spite of my mess.”It all began in his 30s, he said, when he began frequenting strip clubs more, which eventually led to a divorce.  “My soul was sterile; it was dead. I really had no conscience whatsoever," he said.  "It was all about me. It was about making as much money as I could possibly make."Myers said that he first got involved in pornography after he was asked by an exotic dancer to help her start a porn site.  "I’m thinking in the back of my head, 'Well, I could do that,' and so I did,” he said.  “The first week we did $6,000 in sales, and I was instantly hooked. Within a year I had 19 web sites. We were doing sales of $30,000 to $40,000 a month for our sites. In two years I sold my whole program for 2.5 million."Myers continued producing pornography for three more years and started taking ecstasy.  "It was about a 150 hours a week of drug-induced fake happiness that is as far from real as you can get,” he said.  “I knew I was destroying lives at this point. It caught up to me mentally that what I was doing was just disastrous, not only just for the models that worked for me, but for people in general. I knew something was going to have to give, but I stuck to it, and this drug kept me happy. As much as I had people around me, I was so completely alone. I had many nights just by myself just alone."His breaking point only came four years ago, when he was arrested for manufacturing and distributing ecstasy after sharing some with a porn model who had been asking him to remove photos of her from his sites. "I grabbed three pills, one for each of her friends, not knowing that she had had about a month-long conversation with the local police department about me and about getting her pictures off the Internet," he said.Myers’ house was raided; he lost everything and fell into depression.  “I went upstairs, grabbed a bottle of vodka and Vicodin. I took all of them, drank the fifth of vodka and I should have died,” he said.  “For whatever miraculous reason, I woke up the next morning when I shouldn’t have. I think at that point I realized I need help and I can’t do this on my own. I just so desperately wanted someone to reach out to me, and I was alone."He decided to attend a Christian camp, where he responded to an altar call and sought God’s forgiveness.  But, he said, he still felt that he was too far gone for redemption.  “I’d done way too much, and in my mind, I had gone way off the deep end,” he said.  “Although I knew that something had happened that day, I certainly didn’t feel like God could restore me."Myers was soon welcomed into the home of an old friend, who was by then a Christian pastor.  “They wrapped their arms around me and loved me and took care of me beyond what I could even possibly imagine,” he related.  “That meant everything. That was confirmation that grace was real."Through reading Scripture and listening to worship music, he quickly found that God was purifying his mind.  “It was just like I was being washed from the inside out,” he said. “My mind was being purified, and all those images were going away.”After an eight-month criminal trial, Myers was sentenced to a year in jail, where he read Scripture and made plans to put his web skills to God’s service.In 2008, he launched Godbeat.tv, a Youtube-like video sharing site with a commitment to being family-friendly.  "Instead of sharing filth, He’s given me an opportunity to share God’s love and put it in as many homes as we can,” he said.  “It’s my personal mission of redemption. It’s like, ‘God, You’ve given me these skills. Let's use them for Your glory instead of Your destruction.'"“Every day He’s chipping off a little chip of the mess I’d made,” says Myers.  “I know I’ll never be perfect, but He’s taken what Satan meant for evil and turned it into something amazing. Just further proof of God’s amazing grace. The things He can do and the restoration He can make blows my mind still." http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/from-pornographer-to-family-media-a-web-developers-conversion/

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