My Testimony - how Jesus Christ took away my sin and changed my life
I was born into a Christian family. I "accepted Jesus into my heart" at age four, but I didn't understand at the time what this meant. We attended a local charismatic church that was a spin-off on Word of God Community in Ann Arbor, MI. This group was made up of mostly Catholics at the time, we Protestants were in the minority. The church eventually broke its ties with the Word of God Community, and became a "Vineyard" Church. I grew very little as a believer in that church. The pastor was very liberal, and was have known to have said that if it wasn't for abortion, he would have been a Democrat. He once preached a sermon saying that God had created life by using evolution. The church had some of the usual "charismatic" happenings, like people being "slain in the spirit", but this did not happen very often. When I was in sixth grade, my parents put me in a private school. (Huron Valley School located in Ypsilanti, MI) This school claimed to be non-denominational, but most of the staff and students were Catholic and eventually after I left the school ran out of money and became an all-Catholic school. This school did as little help as the church. They used the Living Bible as their primary Bible. I went along with this because it seemed easier to read, and I didn't know that the Bible versions were different, I thought that they were all the same. In fact, I liked the Living Bible so much that I started using it at home, too. Although the school claimed to be nondenominational, most of the students and at least half of the staff were Roman Catholic.
I kept using the LB after leaving the "Christian" school. I didn't really use it, but if I read a bible, that's the one I would use. My aunt died the Sunday before I started high school (08/31/97). I missed her funeral because it was on the first day of school. My high school career was off to a bad start. On top of this, I started reading a book my mom gave me for Christmas entitled Is the Turin Shroud Genuine by Rodney Hoare (another "relic" for the papists to worship). This book had a very incredible conclusion, one that would shock any true Christian! It concluded that Jesus had not really died, but had only been comatose, and that His resurrection was only Him coming out of His supposed coma! This author apparently isn't saved, because he denies the most basic Christian doctrine that Jesus died on the cross. Unfortunately, I, not having been taught with "sound doctrine", was inclined to believe him. These were my spiritual dark days.
A few months later, I was reading a set of Bible encyclopedias published by Zondervan. I read through them consecutively, and when I was reading the New Testament part, I learned the basics of Christianity, such as that Jesus died on the cross for our sins (I always thought that this was just another "Bible story that they taught us in Sunday School! This shows how lousy that Vineyard "church" was!)
Well, we still kept going to that spiritually dead church. It wasn't until my parents moved out of Ypsilanti that we stopped attending there. I personally feel that God moved us out of Ypsilanti to get us out of that church.
Some time in 1999 I saw a video ("Straight form the Joint Chiefs", with Al Cuppet) which talked about, in part, the false new Bible versions. It shocked me out of using the LB, and I went back to the NKJV, but I still didn't really care. I hardly ever read my Bible back then, anyway. I asked for and got a Scofield KJV (1998 ed.) for Christmas 1999. I didn't really want a Scofield, I just wanted a KJV, but my mom talked me into getting a Scofield. She didn't know any better, either. I read the Scofield some, but the footnotes and suggested word changes distracted me from the Word. I still didn't grow spiritually. I rarely read the Bible, but if I did, I would use the Scofield KJV. We finally moved on Nov. 12, 1999, to a much safer place. More of the people in our area claim to be Christians, but their is a higher percentage of Catholics here. Since there were no charasmatic churches here, we started attending a (NIV using) Baptist church because it had a good youth group. They were preaching basic, fundamental doctrines, but since most of this I had never heard before, I listened more readily. Even then, I was still hardly a "Sunday Christian." I thought like the rest of the world outside and sometimes even in church.
Finally, that winter, I forced myself to recommit my life to Christ. At this time I was using a Scofield KJV, but that doesn't matter because I hardly read it anyway. Unfortunatly it was short lived yet again, and I backslid even further.
The next fall, I went on a retreat with the Church youth group to Honey Rock Camp, which is somewhere in central Wisconsin. Hitherto I had been possessed with my hobby in electronics, but now that obsession was being replaced with another one. It still wasn't Christ, but this obsession eventually led me back to Him. When I returned from the retreat, I prayed and asked God to help me to stop putting my electronics hobby first in my life. He helped me, but I still didn't put Him first in my life. My new obsession was first in my life, but God still was near last.
In January 2001, I started putting my trust back in Him, and allowed Him to be Lord over some (but not all) areas of my life. I took the first step of obedience by being baptized, which I had put of for a while. In the end, I am glad that I was not baptized in the Vineyard church.
Even after this, things were still not going well in my spiritual life. I forced myself to read my Bible fifteen minutes a night, but nothing sank in. It was like my eyes were blinded to the truth. My obsession became the lord of my life; I seldom thought about any thing other than it. This obsession lead me to believe lies and to try to prove things that were unprovable. In fact, most evidence pointed to the exact opposite of what I was trying to prove, but just like Darwin and
Westcott and Hort, I ignored most of the opposing evidence. I needed to be free from this, and that would take a miracle.
In late March 2001, I remembered that my dad would always say "The truth will set you free." I decided to see if this came from the Bible, so I looked it up in a concordance. I found John 8:32: "And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." I wrote this one down, as well as John 14:6 and John 8:36 ("If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.")
On
April 8, 2001 (Palm Sunday), the strongest evidence against my claim was forced in my face. It was impossible to refute it. I was forced to give up my obsession, because it was obviously in error. I knew the truth, and the truth had made me free from this obsession. Later in the day, I Iearned what I should do: turn back to God. I felt God telling me that He wanted me to research and expose false Bible versions. First, I had to start reading my own Bible. My Scofield quickly proved itself a piece of junk. It is a 1998 edition, which contains the original KJV readings, but the footnotes and "suggested word changes" confused me and they tended to agree with the corrupted versions. I bought a cheep $5 KJV from Wal-Mart, intending on using it only for school, and using the Scofield as my primary Bible at home, but the Holy Ghost convicted me of using the Scofield, and I now use only the other KJV.
That summer, I went on a mission trip to Mexico with the youth group to build houses for poor people.
