josiahs’ testimony about Jesus
Josiahs’ Life Story of Coming From
Worthless Darkness & Sin into the Untold Greatness of Truth & Favor
1/16/04; 5/24/05; 10/15/05; 11/15/05; 7/30/06;
7/21/07; 8/24/09; 11/27/10-11/30/10; 12/6/10; 12/8/10; 3/15/11 & 7/26/11
(formatting); 5/6/12; 5/14/12; 3/18/17-3/27/17 (20-Year Anniversary Revisions
Contents
1. A Life of Sin & Darkness. 1
The Woe of Living in Modern christianity1
Guilt, Depression, and Hating Life3
Fantasy is More Exciting Than Our god!5
Living a Lie in Middle School7
Seeking to Get Right in High School8
A Desperate Prayer & Cry for Help9
Two Tuesday Night Bible Studies That Changed Everything! 10
Captivated by Jesus, Tormented by the Devil, & Blasphemed by “False
Brothers”11
A Hard House church Transition that was Full of Promise. 12
Set Free & Blasted with Favor!13
A Summary of Persecutions and Rewards14
The Result of Being Blasted by Truth16
The Only Reasonable Response After Reading This Testimony. 17
My life story is about…
· Desperation to be saved from sin and suicide
· Prayers answered & getting to hear the saving Truth
· Being blasted with the Truth and Favor from heaven
· Harsh persecution from family and false brothers
· Bitter betrayal and apostasy
· Startling signs and wonders and miracles scattered in-between all the drama
· Sizzling hopes of greatness from prayer
· Breath-taking prophecies of the future &
· Watching the Word of God actually work and be fulfilled on the earth
I grew up in church my whole life. From childhood I have always believed that the Bible is 100% true, that Jesus is the only way to heaven, and many other basic Biblical principles that most all church people know about and acknowledge. As a typical selfish sinful church kid under the curse of religious sin, I don’t remember anything special about the first few years of my life (as seen in Eph_2:3). But from an early age, I had always eagerly wanted to be a good Christian, especially since I was around 7, and this continued even into when I was particularly heavily enslaved to sin. Believing and even desiring these basic things never saved me from sin. But still, because of these basic things, I saw a number of notable spiritual things happen, even before I was made alive by the Truth and rescued from darkness and connected to the Clean, Real, Biblical Jesus.
When I was around 7 years old, I apparently had some kind of useful “child-like faith” because I eventually started doing things out of a desire to live for God and bearing some kind of “good fruit” (maybe in a limited sense, sometimes partly like Cornelius in Acts 10, etc.). While I saw others doing bad things I diligently sought to do what was right. I really did have notable faith in God and the Bible, especially in certain seasons when my actions proved True, but I had never heard the Biblical Gospel, and I had no idea how to be saved from sin.
Around the age of 7 I had a defining realization that, whether it was in the Bible or in movies, “bad guys always lost” and “good guys always won” in the end. I eagerly wanted to be a good guy and my older brother, in contrast, would cheer for the bad guys in movies. My brother had influenced me to be mean to my sister and to lie to our parents, but at that time I determined to stop lying in order to become a good guy. I vividly remember one of the last times I did something mean to my sister and my mom quickly appeared from around the corner and sternly asked, “did you do that?” and I reluctantly said, “Yes….” My mom proceeded to swiftly spank me and I, of course, realized that I could not keep this up!
I stopped lying to my parents and being mean to our younger sister, and I even stopped deserving punishment from my parents altogether from that point on (I stopped “earning spankings”). I actually began to behave better than my parents, and for the most part, the only time I was punished was when my family was sinning against me because of their own lusts for evil. My mom partly noticed some of this, and seemed to think about it in her heart.
Tragically my eagerness was intercepted by modern Protestant-Baptist christianity. I was snatched by the typical false teachings all around me like “once saved always saved”, “praying the sinners prayer”, heretical “assurance of salvation”, and modern christianity in general. In seeking to be a good Christian, I was intercepted and baptized into churchy heresy and dirty water when I was around 7 years old.
As a natural consequence of living in such a religious and hypocritical culture, I eventually began to compromise and knowingly sin more and more, especially after seventh grade, by following in the footsteps of the bad examples of my family and others who falsely claimed to be christians while living in sin. I learned from my family and the churches we went to, that, if there was anything in the Bible that you did not want to obey, all you had to do was to dream up an excuse and mentally justify it with some kind of theological theory and you could do whatever you wanted to do, and still be justified and go to heaven.
Instead of simply believing and obeying what the Bible said, everyone found ways around it, and so I did too. I compromised the Bible so that I could justify the sins that I wanted to do, just like I saw everyone else doing whenever they wanted to do things the Bible condemned. This is all I knew christianity to be, because this was all I saw church people doing all around me.
Mat_23:15 WEB Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much of a son of Gehenna* as yourselves.
[* Gehenna = the second (eternal) “hell”]
This was the heritage I was given from my birth, and this was the dreadful path I had begun to live out as a growing product of modern christianity.
Heavy guilt hung over me just like many in my family, and I began to be seriously depressed much more than most of them. I wanted to kill myself, but because I was taught that it was wrong, I did not. I remember lying on my bed staring at the wall wishing I could only get up the courage to kill myself, and I even practiced by holding my breath.
And why all this depression and suicidal despair? Besides my own sin and guilt, to make matters even more hopeless, I was hated. The males in my family might say that they loved me with their mouth, but they hated me by their deeds, and they continuously despised me and shamed me my whole life. All my life I had no idea how specifically the Bible condemns all such fake hypocritical love:
Rom_12:9 a CAB Let love be without hypocrisy… Abhor that which is evil. Cling to that which is good.
Literally: “the love be ·un-hypocritical / without underjudging /
without distinguishing itself under a false guise…” (Rom_12:9 a RTA)
Rom_13:10
CAB [the (ἡ)] Love ·does no
[not work / is not working (οὐκ ἐργάζεταιV-PNI-3S)]
harm [nasty/damage/harm (κακὸν)]
to a [the (τῷ)]
neighbor [near / close one
(πλησίον)]…
1Co_13:4-5 RTA ·the [serious] love [῾η ἀγάπη]… does not do shame/devaluingV-PAI-3S…
Never mind KJV and other periphrastic English versions which simply say things like, “Doth not behave itself unseemly” (1Co 13:5 KJV). In first Corinthians 13 “shame” is a present-tense, active voice, action-verb (V-PAI-3S) that “love” does not do to others by very definition, so you can’t say you love anyone seriously [῾η ἀγάπη] if your actions devalue and shame them. So we see that real, serious, non-hypocritical Love from God does not harm others by sinning against them and shaming them, since the real Biblical Love does not even do shame or sins or harm to others at all, and yet this sinful fake love was the only love I knew in churchianity my whole life. I continuously searched for real, serious, non-hypocritical love for my whole life.
As for me, even though I was eventually living in sin like they were, yet I was not as overwhelmingly in love with sin and evil as they were, and they hated me because of this. They had a very unusual love for evil, and I had a very unusual craving for righteousness.
Many of those from my family also despised me because I was the younger, second son, and I seemed weak in their eyes when I did not walk around with arrogance and irrational confidence and perverted pride. I could not muster up any motivation to boast myself to be big bold and strong to sin like they did. I had a working conscience, and they didn’t.
Jer_4:22 WEB …they don't know [LXX: ᾔδεισαν] me; they are ·foolish children, and they have no understanding [LXX: foolish and unwise children (CAB); lit. mindless and not putting two and two together (i.e. with conclusive understanding)]; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
(Compare: Amo_3:10 MT; Psa_14:4; Jer_5:4, 2Pe_3:5)
Their consciences were mostly seared over with lust, indulgence, confidence, strength, pride and constant sinning (1Ti_4:2; Rom_1:28; Eph_4:19). They bullied and cheated their way through life, and I was generally an easy, vulnerable, and captive target to despise and exploit, and they loved to congratulate themselves for seeming to succeed so well with sinning against me no matter how much they destroyed my life -- all while going to church all the time and boasting that they were dedicated Christians on their way to heaven for believing in JC. And by the way: “love does not favorably rejoice upon the injustice/unrighteousness” (1Co_13:5 RTA) but instead ‘hates what is evil by clinging to what is good’ (Rom_13:10).
The more they oppressed me with hateful darkness and unending sin, the more I could not bear living in sin myself and doing the same evil against God that they did against me. And even though a lot of these dynamics were working out in me subconsciously, I had an increasing yearning for justice and I could not stand myself for all the evil I had become. It drove me crazy to keep on sinning and being a part of the same problem that made my life so bitter, suicidal, and hopeless. I couldn't stand being a part of the same way of life that made me want to kill myself.
Deep down somewhere I desperately wanted to be free from the hateful evil and condemnation that filled my life with unbearable shame and inflamed my family with unending madness and unbridled injustice and crimes against me. By God’s wise mercy and unending kindness, I eventually began to get poorer and more desperate in my agonizing pain and profound brokenness.
We were all slaves of sin, and I was seriously depressed, but we all thought we were going to heaven. As typical Baptists, we all believed in Easy Believism and we were all taught that once a person was saved they were always saved, no matter how much sin they committed, and because of this I never had the idea that I was on my way to Hell. I even thought my family was saved, because we all made professions of (hypocritical) faith, and that made us all extremely deluded and maddened with blind hypocrisy.
I actually thought all my family was going to heaven despite all the sins they lived in and committed against me, and I also thought I was going to heaven despite my sin, and because of this lie and this heretical hypocrisy, religion erased every aspect of real Justice from our demonic picture of God. I was led to believe that my family could do all this evil against God and me, and God would still let them go to heaven forever, but this heretical and blasphemous portrait of God was in fact, Satan worship.
I knew I hated the sins my family did against me, but I never seemed to fully make the conscientious realization that my depression and hopelessness might be reversed if I were to get out of sin myself. I was in denial, and although I had convinced myself to a point that what I was doing was not wrong, I still had something in my conscience that was following me around. I had heard a verse when I was young which says:
Num_32:23 KJV …be sure your sin will find you out…
Or as the LXX has it:
Num_32:23 CAB …you will sin against the Lord; and you shall know your sin, when afflictions shall come upon you.
And it also says:
Luk_12:1-3 CAB …He began to say to His disciples first of all, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy [i.e. not “legalism”]. 2 For there is nothing covered that shall not be unveiled, and nothing secret that shall not be made known. 3 Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in behind closed doors shall be proclaimed on the housetops.
(Also Mat_10:26 etc.)
Because I knew that the Bible was True, I was in constant fear knowing that one day the sins that I was doing in the dark would be exposed. This is why the Bible also says:
Joh_3:19-21 CAB And this is the condemnation [κρίσις – judgement], that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness more than the light, because their works were evil. 20 For everyone that does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be exposed. 21 But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God."
This was the condemning judgement I felt. Church people always seem to say, “there is no condemnation” in reference to Romans 8, but that is not what it says. It says that there is none “…for those who are in anointed one, Jesus,” and it qualifies this as those, “who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit,” (Rom_8:4 CAB). – This “no condemnation” [Οὐδὲν…κατάκριμα – not one (thorough) judging down] state does not include those who are outside of Anointed One Jesus, as Romans 8 clearly shows. And we have already seen that Jesus Himself already clearly affirmed the existence of this dreadful condemning judgement in John 3, and it was in that condemnation I was trapped.
Even though my parents typically never admitted that all the sinful things we were doing were actually sinful, yet in increasing ways I craved something that was right, and the confusion of having sin yet wanting something good eventually made my conscience more miserable than the rest of my family. In the end, it does not matter how many religious tricks you pull to mask your sin, you will still inherit these “wages of death” (Rom_6:23) as a sure promise from God if you’re actually living in sin, no matter how “christian” you seem to be.
Fantasy Is More Impressive and Fulfilling than the
Versions of god in Modern Christianity
Even though I wanted so much to be a good Christian, I was very confused as to why I liked movies more than church, and even worse, I knew there was something radically fake and vain about these fantasy stories that were not real which I loved so much more than our religion.
I was entrenched in TV and movies since I was born, like many modern children, but eventually it was clear that the “escape” of fantasy and entertainment had deeply captured my heart. Because of my hatred of my own life, and the bitter darkness of filthy American christianity, I sought everything I could to do to escape reality. It was preferable to quickly set my heart on anything rather than facing this worthless and wretched life I was living. I would almost do anything to escape from the feelings of darkness and gnawing pain of worthlessness, vanity, condemnation, and hopelessness in this life. I hated life so much that anything was better and more of an answer to life than the religiosity that claimed to have the answer.
Despite our religiosity and claims of “knowing christ”, God still says you have to actually repent of sin to escape the death and hopelessness of vanity:
Eph_2:12 KJV …at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:
Psa_39:5 CAB …my existence is as nothing before You; indeed, every man living is altogether vanity. Pause.
Psa_78:33 CAB And their days were consumed in vanity, and their years with anxiety.
Psa_144:4 CAB Man is likened unto vanity: his days pass as a shadow.
Ecc_1:2 CAB Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
Ecc_1:14 CAB I beheld all the works that were done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Ecc_2:1 CAB I said in my heart, Come now, I will test you with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure. And behold, this is also vanity.
Ecc_2:17 CAB So I hated life, because the work that was done under the sun was evil before me. For all is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Ecc_2:23 CAB For all his days are sorrowful, and vexation of spirit is his; in the night also his heart rests not. This is also vanity.
Ecc_12:8 CAB Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher; all is vanity.
1Co_15:19 CAB If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
We can also reapply what is said earlier in this passage:
1Co_15:17 WEB …your faith is vain [ματαία]; you are still in your sins.
Because of this dark inheritance and the hopeless ache of vanity I was constantly under, I gave myself to obsess over movies and various forms of entertainment, much like those I was raised around, except for me, typically the more warped in fantasy they were, the more I liked them, especially because with them I could maintain a more vivid escape from reality, and drown my constant sorrows with the indulgence, pleasures, and entertainment of this life. The crown of my fantasy-idolatry was Star Wars, and one of the main things I wanted to do with my life was to make movies like those I polluted myself with. But again the Bible says:
Jas_4:4 CAB …Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world is constituted an enemy of God.
(see Woes
of Worldliness)
As time went on, I eventually practiced more and more of the sins I saw as I fell deeper and deeper into scandal after scandal, especially when I saw them reinforced in church as well as in fantasy. But against these things God says very clearly:
Gal_5:19-21 CAB Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are: adultery, fornication [i.e. sex before marriage], immorality, lewdness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, 21 envies, murders, drinking bouts, revelries, and the like; which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Thankfully I never had a girlfriend my whole life, and I was never “cool” enough to hang out with many friends, so my sins where crippled by my sad state in life, but my heart and will had plunged more and more in sin as time progressed.
In my youth there was a great conflict inside my own heart, because I could not reconcile why I was more satisfied with movies and indulgence than church, when we all theoretically believed and knew and emphatically said, “Jesus is the life” and “Jesus is the answer”. Although I knew that none of the shameful fantasies I was entertained by were real, and I really knew inside that I was now in horrible sin, still, they were definitely more real, exciting, fulfilling, and spiritual than the christianity I grew up with, and I did not know how to reconcile this inconsistency because I always wanted to be a serious and dedicated Christian.
Though my entertainments were polluting me with demonic filth, Truth be told, they were more honest than the hypocrisy and death I was being offered Sunday mornings and the christianity I was taught as a whole. What I did in such paganism was the only natural thing to do when raised in a religion that said we could indulge in this life, live in sin, and still go to heaven. And if we don’t repent and start demanding the REAL Good Announcement (Gospel) like Jesus taught, that demands people to forsake everything to follow Him, we will never see people get Truly free of sin:
Joh_8:34 MKJV Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, Whoever practices sin is the slave of sin.
And again He says:
Luk_14:33 WEB So therefore whoever of you who doesn't renounce all that he has, he can't be my disciple.
Most of my sins reached their height around seventh grade, but despite this, everyone thought that I was the ideal Christian of Christians (see Act_26:5; Php_3:5). And it was in the midst of this christian darkness that I had slipped in to greater and greater sins.
In eighth grade, and at other times after that, I remember when the Scripture that I had always dreaded came true in my life, and people found out about the sins I was practicing and the name of Jesus was completely shamed and discredited. The looks that were on their faces haunted me from that time on. (I wasn’t until about 20 years later when I would finally run into some of them again and apologize for my hypocrisy and utter failure.)
After years of overt sin I tried to stop and do what was right, but I was addicted and trapped. I would stop for a week or so only to fall right back in. I had no one who could help me in my pursuit of trying to get free, only a conglomeration of religious people who’s instruction had led me into this bondage to begin with. They were all slaves of sin themselves as well. They cared nothing about Truth and they could give me no hope of change.
After trying over and over to get free and getting nowhere, around the beginning of 10th grade (1996-1997) I was finally able to stop my worst sins, but I still ignorantly held on to TV, Movies, Star Wars and other evil indulgences. God was obviously “dealing with me”, because after I repented of and stopped what I knew was sin, I finally saw that the things that I did not even know were sin were also wrong. The impossible happened and I finally came to terms with this and admitted to myself that Star Wars was actually wrong, but despite this I continued to watch it.
I had mostly repented of what I knew was sin, but I did not know to repent of the things I was just starting to wonder about and admit were wrong. I thought that I might be able to know it was wrong and still watch and enjoy it, perhaps “in an informed way”.
I knew that Star Wars was based out of new age “universal” religious beliefs and that the creator, George Lucas, admitted to this in interviews. -- This is called “paganism”, or “neo-paganism”, and it is constantly condemned by the Bible. By considering the philosophies embraced in this movie, you can see defining elements of Pantheism, Dualism, and Metaphysicalism, and not to mention its obvious links to religions like the Ying Yang (i.e. the “bright” and “dark” sides of “the force”). Twice in the original trilogy they even directly hint that “the force” is a religion. But contrary to all of this, I knew that the Bible condemned all paganism and faith toward worldly religions, and that the only faith I should follow was what was consistent with the Truth in the Bible.
Eph_5:11 CAB And have no partnership with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
3Jn_1:11 CAB Beloved, do not imitate the evil, but the good...
Deu_18:9 CAB And when you shall have entered into the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations of those nations.
Deu_6:13-15 CAB You
shall fear the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve [quoted by
Jesus in Mat_4:8-10];
and you shall cleave to Him…
14 Go not after other gods, of the gods of the nations round about you,
15 for the Lord your God in the midst of you is a jealous God, lest the Lord your God
be very angry with you, and destroy you from off the face of the earth. 16 You shall not tempt the Lord your God,
as you tempted Him… [quoted by Jesus in Mat_4:5-7]
Note: We see that Deuteronomy six is quoted by Jesus twice when being tempted in the dessert before He called His disciples and began ministering (Mat_4:1-11).
Deu_8:19-20 CAB And it shall come to pass, that if you do at all forget the Lord your God, and should go after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you shall surely perish! 20 As also the other nations which the Lord God destroys before your face, so shall you perish, because you would not heed the voice of the Lord your God.
Exo_34:14-17 CAB For you shall not worship strange gods, for the Lord God, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God; 15 lest at any time you… go a whoring after their gods, and sacrifice to their gods, and they call you, and you should eat of their feasts, 16 …and your daughters should go a whoring after their gods, and your sons should go a whoring after their gods. 17 And you shall not make to yourself molded gods.
Jer_25:5-9 CAB Turn, everyone of you, from his evil way, and from your evil practices, and you shall dwell in the land which I gave to you and your fathers, forever and ever. 6 Do not go after strange gods, to serve them, and to worship them, lest you provoke Me by the works of your hands, to do you harm. 7 But you hearkened not to Me. 8 Therefore thus says the Lord: Since you did not believe My words, 9 behold I will send and take a family from the north, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants of it, and against all the nations round about it. And I will utterly destroy them, and make them a horror, and a hissing, and an everlasting reproach.
(also see Deu_11:28; 1Jo_5:21; Deu_13:6-11)
My parents bought my brother a pickup truck, and he began to take my younger sister and me to school. He also used his pickup to start going to a new Baptist church that was bigger, and included a youth group, and was less boring than my parent’s dead and painfully vain and empty Baptist church.
One day around 1996 or early 1997, the newer Baptist church we were attending was having a typical shallow church service, and even though it was not as boring as my parent’s church, I was still deeply discouraged and hopeless over it. And especially in light of being sickened by potentially attending yet another fake and shallow church service, at some point either before or during the service I stepped out and walked away from things by myself in the parking lot of the church, while everyone else was inside .
I walked around in the parking lot and prayed in my frustration, “Is there anyone else who wants God as much as I do?!” I was frustrated and alone in my desire to really live for God and I did not know how to do it on my own. Although I did not completely know how to put my frustration into words, I essentially figured that the whole world was filled with religious people like I grew up with, and that there was little to no hope of finding someone who really knew God and could help me get there too. I had somehow stopped all the sin that I knew to stop, and yet, I was still in hopeless darkness and depression. I knew there had to be something more than what I had experienced so far.
I looked at the church building next to me. It was beside me as I walked back and forth, and prayed in the parking lot, and I felt such deep despair because I knew there was not one person in that church building or in the rest of the world that I had ever met who Truly Loved God and could help me. So I begged and cried out to God saying, “There has just got to be someone somewhere out there with answers, who really wants God as much as I do and could help me get there… Please somehow send them to me, or send me to them!”
My brother and I were attending P.K Yonge High School, and my brother started dating a girl from our new Baptist church, and she was attending Bucholz High School. Even though my parents had just bought me my first car, my brother was still functioning as my transportation to school and back home. So even though I had a new car, I was still going pretty much everywhere my brother and his girlfriend went, especially after school.
Very shortly after many frustrations and discouragements, and the defining prayer I prayed in the church parking lot, around early 1997 , my brother and his girlfriend decided to go to a Tuesday night Bible study at his girlfriend’s high school which was led by one of their history teachers, and I naturally went with them.
This Bible study met in one of the portables behind the school, and especially in the earlier years the room was sometimes crowded with kids from a number of youth groups as we sat on the floor and in desks. On this Tuesday night I looked over the other kids in the room as this teacher spoke at this Bible study, and I was shocked and astonished because for the first time I saw someone who actually had Truth and believed what he was saying. He was alive, and I knew what he was giving from the Bible was True, as though he spoke living and True oracles (Act_7:38), and it challenged me to the core of my being. He was displaying everything that I had ever wanted in life, and did not know to pursue.
As far as I remember, at the first two Tuesday night Bible studies that I attended, the history teacher spoke against things like TV, movies, and idolatry. My brother drove me to the first two Bible studies and on the way home after the first one, while I was sitting in the back seat of his pickup, he criticized me for being so quickly impressed with someone after just one meeting and not even knowing who they were. But I could very easily tell that what I had found was actually what I had basically been longing for and even crying for my whole life.
Especially after the second meeting, it was as though someone took a bow and arrow at full strength and shot it straight into the middle of my heart. I knew I was guilty, and he spoke to the very core of the sin I was still living in. I was so convicted and revolutionized that night that I set a line in the sand and basically said, “That’s it!” and I completely rejected Star Wars, because I knew and believed that this proclamation was True and worth my whole life.
As a result of these two Bible Studies, I began to zealously go through my room and pull things off the shelves and I began to clean out my life and rid myself of all idolatry. At some point I would scan through my whole room and pray about everything I had. I ended up getting rid of my TV in my room, and I became the first teenager that I knew who did not watch TV or movies anymore because I had finally repented from all such sinful pollutions.
After the first two Bible studies we attended, my brother and his girlfriend stopped going. I deeply thanked God for knowing the future and so strategically giving me my first car just a few weeks before that, just in time so that I could start driving there myself.
One Tuesday night after the meeting when someone asked this teacher were he went to church, I listened in intently, because I eagerly wanted to know too. He said he went to his dad’s house church, and I soon began to go there too. In all of these things I began to Love the Truth. I was cleared from countless false teachings and perverted heresies that I had been raised with my whole life. It was an exciting time because I had come to the point where I finally, Truly believed and absolutely LOVED obeying the Bible for the first time in my life.
I was exponentially addicted to Truth, real wisdom, and seriously obeying the Bible as soon as finally heard something True and clean from that history teacher for the first time. I burned inside to see the church repent, and I seem unquenchably gripped and overcome with this as a core part of my calling.
During the next 3 years things were intense. I saw miracles happen, and I started experiencing the reality of God. But despite all of these good things, and despite the fact that I was not living in any known sin at all, I was still depressed and plagued with demons. For countless sessions over countless nights I was prayed for by the people at the house church. Even though they prayed for me for so many countless hours, I was never set free .
The history teacher’s dad led the house church which I had just begun to attend, and at that time the house church leader knew more about the Bible than anyone I had ever met before. In his teaching, he very effectively demolished many common false doctrines and made use of many unpopular Scriptures, but despite this, tragically, he was not a real Bible obeyer (Act_20:30; Gal_2:4; 2Pe_2:1). This leader was the main one who spent countless hours praying over me. He had many integrity breaches, and while praying over me and while talking to others, he eventually lied and gave false prophecies against me several times, and he never repented.
Along with the integrity problems of the main leader, he also had an older disciple who was also a “false brother”. The leader and his disciple despised me, and spoke evil about me without a cause. This false disciple also gave false prophecies against me and said that I was suffering from demons of depression because I was still secretly living in terrible sins, although I had already repented of all obvious sins before meeting them. Although it was made clear that this disciple had lied and given a false prophecy against me, and even though the Old Testament calls for the death penalty for such an evil and wicked crime, no one ever repented to me or even said they were sorry.
I was so intensely captivated and enthralled with the clean light at work within the house church leader’s son (the history teacher), and I absolutely cherished and clung to everything the leader knew about the Bible, yet with all bitter irony, the leader and his disciple despised me for it. One time I sacrificed going on a major family trip in order to not miss a single Sunday meeting (my parents insisted on leaving before Sunday and I refused to miss Church), and another time I even crawled out of bed with painful aches and sickness from the flue to show up for church and get prayer for healing, and even though I made many extreme sacrifices, and bore persecution from family, and endured in doing good, and increased in virtue, and bore much good fruit, and loved them with all eagerness, and did everything I could to imitate and obey what good things they spoke about, they still hated my righteous faith and eager love for Justice and Perfect Truth. They remained cold and stiff toward me over many years, without any real eagerness or love or recognition of the Truth I craved and the blamelessness I displayed.
Despite the problems at the house church, I remained faithful to them, believing the best about them I possibly could, and persevered, hoping for everything to eventually pan out and make sense. And despite their treacherous despising of me, and always seeming to think the worst of me without a cause, I still started seeing stunning miracles occasionally, even when the house church people were not around, and I received burning promises from heaven in prayer about what great things would happen to me later.
I knew that I was supposed to do something to call the church to repent, and even though I was more in love with wisdom than just about anyone else, and I knew more about obeying the Bible than almost anyone else in my life outside of the house church, yet I still felt drastically uneducated about all that was needed to preach to churches. My parents were insisting that they wanted to pay for me to go through college, and because I was yearning and longing to learn what was needed for my calling, I naturally wondered if I could go to some kind of Bible school to resolve my great lack of knowledge and to become educated enough to confront the intimidating complications of apostate church theology.
As I sat in a back room at the house church while no one was there, I prayed about the idea of going to Bible school so I could be sufficiently educated to preach, and then strong burning promises gripped me in prayer that forbade me to be trained in that way, and I obediently yielded by faith and great hope just as I was told, having been mightily gripped with much reverent fear of the Truth of God. And even though I wanted to give my whole life to ministry and preaching, when I eventually went to college later on I went to graphic design school instead of Bible school, all because of these powerful promises in prayer.
A lot of things happened during this time of beginning to follow the Clean Jesus, and a few years later around June 1999, at some point about 1 to 3 weeks before I was to graduate High School, my parents ended up talking with the house church leader on the phone and my parents told me they did not want me going there anymore. This was partly because I had been revolutionized so much to obey the Bible after going there, and as always, just as whenever anyone wants to zealously obey Jesus in Truth, my family thought that I was in a cult, and their disapproval was also partly because of some of the perversions of the false brothers there.
Even though my parents were
opposing the house church leader, the house church leader said that I should
listen to my parents and stop going there (as though a grown spiritual man who
is Biblically “of age” should “submit to” his unbelieving parents and not go to
a church that contradicts their heretical traditions). But in Truth, the
leader’s sins against me were hypocritically reinforcing and multiplying the
depression he was supposed to be praying against. How could he help me? This was at least
partly a way of getting rid of me without admitting any failure on his behalf
to give me life and justice by the Truth.*
I thought that I would never find another place to go to church because it was already such a miracle to have found this group of people, despite all their integrity issues. (Although it is not hard at all to find false brothers, it is hard to find any group that has any significant number of people who are even seriously trying to actually obey the Bible.) But despite my dismay from having no hope of finding another church, right around this time I found out about an Assembly of god church, and despite the denomination and the leadership, there was a core of eager people there that actually cared about good things, and they were being discipled by the youth pastor there.
In the midst of all of this painful transition, because the history teacher stayed faithful to me spiritually, I continued going to the high school Bible studies where I had first heard the Biblical Gospel, while also going to the Assembly of god church on a more regular basis where I was partly discipled by the youth pastor there.
After going to this new church, a few discussions happened and the history teacher and I finally started to consider and partly realize that I still needed to be legitimately baptized in Truth, so the teacher finally immersed me toward the beginning of my stay at the new church. Interestingly, the teacher did not baptize me in the pool behind his dad’s house as others had been often baptized (at least partly because I wasn’t really welcome there anymore), but the teacher baptized me in a neighborhood pool somewhere else. Perhaps this kept and preserved my baptism from certain defilements and perversions that others had suffered under the house church leader’s baptisms.
The fact that it took about three years before anyone baptized me is largely due to the desperate state of things whenever aspiring disciple-makers dare to basically “start from scratch” and seek to promote the Truth in the midst of the desolation and apostasy of the ignorant and dark age we live in. (Also Note: although there are plenty of people going around who are zealous to baptize or re-baptize you into dirty water, there is almost no one going around who even has the capacity to baptize you into the Clean Truth.) -- Like it or not, as “non-ideal” as the delayed timing and rough context might seem, this was the closest thing available to obeying the Bible at that time.
[* Who is at Fault
When Discipleship Fails? -- On one
hand, if a potential disciple is not “good ground”, then there is virtually
nothing a discipler can do to help them get anywhere
spiritually, except throw the law at them. On the other hand, if a disciple
shows extreme love and faithfulness and zeal for the Truth, both in the
Scriptures as well as in their discipler, then the discipler should readily be able to benefit them, at least
to some significant degree, according to the Truth effectively at work in each
of them. And if a discipler needlessly harms a good
disciple, then the dicipler is surely guilty.]
To make a long story short, it was at this new church among this core of disciples that I learned to pray and ended up seeking God intensely over the next five years, and I was set free from all kinds of spiritual bondage, and I was blasted and overwhelmed by the favor of God in life-altering times in prayer. I cried out with everything I had to heaven and received explosive promises and gifts from heaven in prayer that permanently altered everything inside of me and gave me perfect infinities to open up the Word of God and proclaim Truth to the nations!
At this time I was given the beginning of the promises I had heard about in prayer while at the house church, and I was given power from that point onward that would go with me in increasing measures to disciple the poor into Clean righteous Truth, pull down all idols of the flesh and Satan-worship, and call the church to repentance.
When darkness was my destiny, the light of Truth shined in and did the impossible. I still remember turning myself around at some point during this time and realizing for the first time, that I actually enjoyed living! The addictive favor and approval of the Clean God contradicted all of the blasphemy and heresy of the house church as well as the hopelessness and rejection from my family. Life did not get easy after finally getting help from heaven, but I did apprehend a solid basis of fiery hope that went with me through the rest of my life, and somehow saved me through countless trials from that point onward.
Little did I realize how my testimony would eventually become the gateway to other people’s testimonies, and my suffering would be turned around into the salvation of other church people from sin on into the glorious heritage of Obedience.
· 1997 – I started going after the Biblical Jesus, and I was immediately persecuted by family for wanting to obey the Bible.
· 1999 – I had to leave the house church I cherished, so I started going to an Assembly of god church.
· 2004 – Virtually everyone at the Assembly of god church apostated into the modern christianity that they used to preach against.
· After getting kicked out of a church for the first time, persecutions began against me from the modern church as a whole from every direction.
· After being kicked out I briefly was able to return to the house church again for a shorter season, and they briefly acknowledged the good spiritual things that had been worked in me, but they soon fell back to their madness and “kicked me out” with much greater hostility than before. (And even though the house church did not approve of the worldly Assembly of god church, they followed the same spirits of apostasy against me.)
· In the end, the core of people at the Assembly of god church and the house church leadership continued and increased in their heretical rejection of me in their rebellion against the clear and canonical teachings of the Scriptures (Mat_7:13-27; 1Jn 2:29 – 1Jn 3:1, etc.)
· I was isolated and “thrown into the wilderness” for three very painful years and forsaken by nearly every friend that I had in the process, many of whom had actually been eager disciples before falling away.
· After the persecutions of 2004 and 2005, I tried to lay low and tried to “not make any waves”, but I continued to be threatened and opposed in other church situations as well.
· From 2004-2009 I “church hopped” (off and on) looking for signs of life.
· I often visited a new church every Sunday, and I ended up visiting every known church in my home town area.
· From 2006-2007 I was overwhelmingly gripped in prayer, and I made voice recordings, and I wrote down some of the mighty and strong burning promises from heaven concerning the disciples I would be given.
· Around this time I also returned to one of my old college Bible studies seeking any hope of life.
· 2007 – The Promised Disciples Appeared! 13 days after I explicitly wrote about them, my life climaxed to a height of excitement after the college Bible study, when some University of Florida students started responding to the Real Good Announcement (Gospel). This became the consoling reward and joy of my life.
· A few months after some disciples responded to the Truth, I was harshly opposed, insulted, and kicked out of the college Bible study for giving some Bible verses to one of the students.
· 2008 – I was “dismissed” from another Assembly of god church after a short six months stay in New Jersey.
· April 2009 – Although I was minding my own business (1Th_4:11) and living a quiet and peaceful life (Rom_12:18; 1Th_4:11; 1Ti_2:2), harsh persecutions reached a climax with the same college bible study leader from 2007 “chasing me down” and rallying as many people against me as he could.
· Because of the persecutions of the college bible study leader, more of my old friends apostated and began to harshly oppose me without any cause, even to the point that the disciples who were associated with me were also basically “kicked out” of their church.
· June 2009 – I was kicked out of a salvation army bible camp in Colorado for reading the Bible to some campers (I read Luk_14:25-35 to them, and I asked them what they thought it meant).
· 2009 – The disciples and I attended an Anabaptist church for a while , but we did not find any serious faith in Bible Obedience.
· 2010 – We eventually started doing house church with our small group of persecuted disciples.
· From about 2012-2014 we saw several other disciples fall away into gross American christianity.
· We suffered many unbearable trials and financial distresses, yet heaven somehow provided and never let us fall into debt!
· 2015 – On the 8-year anniversary month of our disciples responding to the Truth, amazing supernatural things started happening on the same days as in 2007.
· Supernatural sign after sign kept happening so fast that it was hard to write it all down.
· As a result, basically all our disciples knew I was supposed to marry one of the disciples, and a few months later we were married.
· We continued to face financial distress after innumerable persecutions and hardships, and many other trials, all while holding onto the hope to be saved by the Divine Greatness and Favor of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Act_14:22 CAB strengthening [ἐπιστηρίζοντες – lit. standing upon] the souls of the disciples, urging them [παρακαλοῦντες – calling next to (them)] to continue [ἐμμένειν – remain/abide] in the faith, saying [καὶ ὅτι – and that], "Through many [πολλῶν] tribulations [θλίψεων] we must [δεῖ – are bound/tied/indebted (to)] ·[in going into, to] enter into [εἰσελθεῖν εἰς] the kingdom of [the (τοῦ)] God."
A number of people have read these incredible summaries of persecutions, and found it hard to believe that so many churches would so aggressively persecute us for simply obeying the Bible. But it is not as though my testimony is “missing details” or explanations as to why people would so quickly persecute us, but rather, if you cannot relate to these wild persecutions, it is because you are in fact missing the real Good Announcement (Gospel) in your life!
Warning: When you have the fake gospel, in America and many modern countries it often feels like people used to persecute disciples in the Bible, but now people have learned to be more peaceful, tolerant, and accepting of the gospel.
Truth: When you hear and obey the real Good Announcement (Gospel) all of the sudden, everything in the Bible becomes very real and relevant and True, including the testimony it has against the astonishing and crazy lust that wicked people have always had to persecute the poor righteous. Because of this, ‘the Scripture cannot be broken’ (Joh_10:35* CAB) and its testimony of persecution is absolutely True:
2Ti_3:12 CAB …and all who [οἱ] desire [θέλοντες] to live [ζῆν] godly [εὐσεβῶς – good-reverently] in Christ [Χριστῷ – anointed one] Jesus will be persecuted [διωχθήσονται – chased/followed/persecuted].
So then, after soberly considering these things, whose experience is True? Is it your experience that looks nothing like the book of Acts and cannot relate to the many persecutions described in the Bible, or is it our experience, which powerfully proves that the Bible is absolutely True?
These persecutions and painful trials have been a defining element of my life and the lives of our disciples. But out of all the pain I have undergone and the opposition I have faced, it is all worth it and I do not regret one painful thing that I have received because of the immeasurable weight of Truth and glory it produces.
Act_5:41 CAB Then [οὖν] [truly (μὲν)] they departed [ἐπορεύοντο] from the presence of the council, · [favorably] rejoicing [χαίροντες] because [ὅτι – (in) that] they were counted worthy [κατηξιώθησαν] to be dishonored [ἀτιμασθῆναι] on behalf [ὑπὲρ – over] of the name of Jesus.
[* Joh_10:35 …καὶ
οὐ δύναται
λυθῆναι ἡ
γραφή – lit. and (there is) no powerful-ability
to loose/slacken/disolve/destroy the
writing/scripture; CAB: “…the Scripture cannot be broken”]
Many things have happen since all of these adventures, but all of these things have culminated into a life of burning for the Righteous Jesus and proclaiming His Truth. I eat, sleep, and breathe to be connected to the Clean Jesus, and to connect others to Him. Unfortunately, almost all of those who seem to be christians are not, and all of these things have born a fervent fire inside of me to see the visible church repent. If possible, I would give up my life to see this happen.
In modern cultures, almost all people are rich, polluted, foolish, indulgent, and strong, and do not believe the message we represent and find it very easy to despise my life and set aside every True thing represented to you in the stories you have just read. Though I urge that we repent in view of the Goodness of God to obtain the salvation of Divine favor from Him, and be discipled to obey all the Words of Jesus, and be saved and rescued from all sin, very few people find the precious favor of Truth and the approval from obeying God attractive or worth giving up their life to lay hold of. Truth is the most illegal substance in modern christianity today, and repeating the Bible and encouraging people to obey it is counted as offensive heresy by most every pastor in today’s church.
Hold your soul carefully! Because otherwise you will very easily despise the Truth that is right in front of you as every other heretic mentioned in this account has done:
Act_7:27 CAB "But the one wronging his neighbor pushed him away, saying, 'Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us?
Act_7:35 CAB This Moses whom they denied, saying, 'Who appointed you a ruler and a judge?' This man God sent as a ruler and redeemer by the hand of the Angel who appeared to him in the bush.
1Sa_10:27 CAB But evil men said, Who is this man that shall save us? And they despised him, and brought him no gifts.
Luk_19:14 CAB But his citizens hated him, and sent a delegation after him, saying, 'We will not have this man to reign over us.'
Mar_6:3-4 CAB Is this not the carpenter, the Son of Mary, and brother of James, Joses, Judas, and Simon? And are not His sisters here with us?" And they were offended at Him.
Notice that from Acts to First Samuel and the Gospels, these accounts describe several different scenarios, yet it is the exact same filthy and wicked heart of unbelief and the same evil flesh of men that loves to lust after pride and arrogance, and it predictably acts out the same heresy and despising and hatred of God in all of these accounts. Take it to heart: just as they despised and did not believe, so also you will sin with their exact same sin against God’s ambassadors, unless you repent and believe the Truth sent to you.
But whether you believe or fall to sin like everyone else, there is Truth to take hold of, and there is pure life flowing from obeying the Scriptures of Truth. And the Righteous Judgment of God will clear all things and show if we have given a reasonable response to the demands of Jesus and the precious proclamation He has sent unto us through proclaimers, and our hearts will finally be exposed before all men and it will be shown before all if we have been attracted to the Truth of His proclamation, or if we have been unbelieving and despised the lowliness and weakness of the vessels God glories in using.
1Co_1:25-31 CAB Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men… 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world in order that He might humiliate the wise, and God chose the weak things of the world in order that He might humiliate the mighty. 28 And the base things of the world, and the things having been despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, in order that He might nullify the things which are, 29 so that no flesh may boast before God. 30 But …Christ Jesus… became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption
And He says earlier:
1Co_2:7-8 CAB But we
speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the wisdom having been hidden,
which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, 8 which none of the rulers of this age knew…
If you are attracted to this mysterious wisdom from God which we speak, you are about to be saved, but if not, you are about to fall into hell.
By default, chances are that you are evil, rich, and hard-hearted just like the hordes of lawless church people described in this account. But if your heart is soft enough so that you have heard Clean Spiritual Truth in reading my story about the Clean Jesus, then the only reasonable response from you is to forsake everything you have, and come get discipled to follow and obey the Real Jesus.
Just as I was attracted to the saving Truth living in that history teacher in 1997, so also now, the only reasonable and righteous response from you is to be enthralled with amazement at and attracted to the Truth and eagerly crave to come get help from the Divinity you have heard proclaimed. Know for sure that if you don’t feel any need to get in contact with any of us to help you go to heaven, I and the rest of our disciples are about to dust off our feet and rise up at Judgement and condemn you with this lawless, liberal, and rich generation, because we repented and believed and eagerly begged for life and discipleship when we had the slightest chance to be helped to live.
Like it or not, my life story somehow ended up being so canonical that you basically have to imitate its eagerness in order to make it to heaven. How can I make such an enormous boast? It is actually very simple: everything that I did in eagerly and zealously responding to that history teacher is exactly what the Canonical Scriptures constantly demand and preach and reinforce that we must do to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven -- and we have documented much of this in our Discipleship Bible study.
A Biblical, eager, zealous, “forsake all” response, which pleads for help to be discipled, is the only reasonable response when hearing the Divine and Perfect Truth from heaven. There is already so much death and apostasy, and your own soul is empty and desolate of Truth. Stop kidding yourself! If you neglect so great a chance to get real, clean salvation from sin (Heb_2:2-3), what other Justice can God give you except to toss your mindless and unreasoning soul in hell along with all other unbelievers?
Repent and be set free from sin, and be made alive by faith in the Truth of obeying everything Jesus commanded. Repent of unbelief and repent of not literally obeying every single Word and detail taught in the Scriptures. No longer allow your soul to be in love with the filthy religions of your own soul, of modern christianity, the independent assurances of perverted “salvation”, and antichrist’s pretend righteousness that lets you live in sin and still think you are going to heaven. Repent of all of this paganism, which is of this world, because they have a bitter end of failure, darkness, guilt, and hopeless condemnation when the Judgement harshly condemns everything that was not in sharing fellowship with what is Perfect and True.
If you are willing to believe that there is hope for your soul to get discipled to obey all the Words of the Clean Jesus and the Perfect Scriptures, then contact us and let us know, and forsake your entire life right now, because that is the only reasonable response:
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