I grew up in what I felt like at the time was a Christian home where my parents took me to church every Sunday. We wouldn’t do much throughout the week from a biblical perspective however we would go to church every Sunday. My brothers, sisters and myself would get up every Sunday to put on our church outfits and head on out the door to church. While driving in the car, it would be a rush to make sure that we learned our Bible verse on the way to church to ensure we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves (or our parents) in Sunday school. My dad would stand up and do the offering plate and my mom was involved in several of the church functions. Although I obviously don’t agree with the way in which we were brought up from a Christian perspective, I do appreciate and respect my parents for doing what they felt was right.

When I was young, my parents divorced. My mom moved out of state and I lived with my father. My mom continued to go to church and my father completely stopped all church activities. The only time I attended church was when I would visit my mom on occasions and maybe a Christmas or Easter Sunday with my dad.

After my parents got a divorce, I would consider myself a very rebellious child. My parents would put us in the middle of their divorce and we would also pit our parents against each other to get what we wanted. I hung out with the wrong crowds and did a bunch of things that I regret to this day.

When I was about a freshman or sophomore in college, my mom gave me the book “Left Behind”. I wasn’t much of a reader but had nothing else to do when visiting her while she was at work so I sat down and read it. It turned out to be one of the most intriguing books I had ever read up to that point. I ended up reading the sequel “Tribulation Force” and the next one or two books after that all in the same visit. And although I absolutely do not agree with the theology of those books today (and do not recommend those for reading), I truly do believe that is something that helped me down the road.

All through college and after for several years I continued to live a very difficult life style. I would get drunk almost every day, go to bars every night and literally party with my friends all the time. Even though I called myself a Christian, I was definitely not walking like Yeshua walked. I didn’t really understand what it meant to be a believer however I had said a prayer asking my Savior to forgive my sins and I didn’t feel like I needed to do much else to be “saved”.

Fast forward about three years later after college, I moved to live by my mom. I started attending a non-denominational church and loved it. I am very outgoing and was a door greeter. I loved meeting new people and welcoming everyone who attended the church. We had a worship leader that is very popular to this day that would sing the music in our church. It was so much fun and I loved it. However at this point I had really never even opened a Bible other than to look at a verse when our preacher was talking. There was really no need to. No one held me accountable, no one asked me questions, and no one challenged me on what I was doing in my life. I was still out partying every night and half the time I showed up to greet at church still hungover from the night before. I lived a horrible lifestyle yet because no one seemed to care, I felt like I was saved.

Then in 2008, President Obama became president. I started to see things happening that reminded me of the Left Behind books I had read. Our media was worshiping Obama, the people of the United States were worshipping him, and it was growing to a global worshipping of this man. I decided I wanted to read the Bible for the first time. I would read Genesis and the first part of Exodus all the way until they started building the tabernacle and then I would get bored and skip to the New Testament. The Old Testament was very difficult for me to understand so I just never wanted to read it. The New Testament seemed so much easier so that is what I focused on. I would read a little bit here and there but never really made it a daily focus for me. But this was a very good start for me as I was finally in the Word…although just barely.

Soon after this, I got married to my wife and we will write our walk together below.

I grew up in a very strict, KJV, baptist church. I was baptized at a young age and spent most of my free time at any church event possible. I spent summers at teen camp and mission trips. I went door to door telling others about our Savior even at a young age with others. I memorized scripture my whole childhood. I spent my schooling in public, private (Christian), and home schooling. Modesty was huge in our home. My parents didn’t allow alcohol of any sort, even in cooking. Around the time I turned 9 my parents got rid of our tv. We were taught to study the scriptures and work hard. We were pretribulation Baptists waiting for Jesus to come back and for us to disappear into the air and live in Heaven forever. We were excited about that rapture to come. We were what most Christians would consider legalistic or hard core.

I struggled with my salvation my whole childhood. I was terrified of hell. I’d pray the sinners prayer almost weekly. I was told over and over if I didn’t know 100% I wasn’t going to hell then I wasn’t saved. I was so worried about not having that confidence.

We were also taught to never question our pastor. What he said was right no matter what and it was dangerous to even look elsewhere outside of our denomination. Our church was in love with him. Standing applauses were frequent for him at our church of about 300. Buying him lavish gifts was the norm. It wasn’t until I was an adult that I saw the arrogance of the leadership. Sin was never confessed in this church and was most often covered up to not cause a “church split”. We were engrained with the thought that there was no perfect church and if we ever left to find it we would ruin it because no person was perfect…but our church was as close to perfect as could be. Our pastor was anointed and had an ability to understand and teach the scriptures to us. I was on fire and excited! My future would definitely involve a Baptist college (one approved by my pastor and church of course), marrying a man at that same college, and leading a life in ministry or serving at a local church. This was the goal and nothing could make my parents happier.

Around the time I turned 18 I started questioning things I had been taught. Why was it wrong to drink specifically? I didn’t see this one. Why was KJV the only inspired version? Why couldn’t other denominations be correct? I started hanging out with more “worldly” people. I started drinking and my desire was no more to go to a Christian college or be in any ministry. During this time I was so guilty over my lifestyle. All my new, non church friends, called me the good girl but I didn’t feel like it because I had not kept myself pure for marriage. I was drinking and listening to things I shouldn’t and not involved in a strong church. I’d lay awake at night terrified but reminding myself over and over I said the sinners prayer and I meant it. I believed on Jesus. I had guilt over my sin too so I had to be saved. Unsaved people didn’t have guilt. They didn’t lay awake at night worried about their sin. I had to be saved.

We met when we were 24 and 19. We dated off and on and married when I was 30 and my wife was 25. At this point my wife still had major guilt over not doing the proper Baptist things and would still wonder if she would go to hell when she died. She kept telling herself that she had said the prayer and her guilt was a good thing because it showed her she had conviction over her sin and without that guilt she’d definitely be unsaved. And as for myself I knew I was saved because I said a prayer and “believed” that our Savior died on the cross for my sins.

We decided to get involved in a church because we both knew that’s where we’d find good people, conservatives, republicans, and people with strong moral values. This is where we’d grow as good, American Christians. We found an amazing church with the most loving people ever. They showed us how to treat each other in a marriage. They had the same values as the church she was raised in but this pastor was not arrogant and his family was all so kind. They’d show up at our door to help us without being asked. The women threw my wife a baby shower when she became pregnant with our firstborn. The men would take me golfing and out for coffee. They truly loved us knowing we were definitely more worldly than they were. This is the church where I started tithing. We were heavily in debt at the time and I considered my money mine and I didn’t want to give it away. I was taught growing up to just throw a dollar in the offering plate and that is what I did as an adult. I overheard my wife telling her brother that she tithed 10% and we got in an argument because I told her we definitely didn’t do that because I did not tithe off my money. That month I had just taken on a new role at work as a sales rep and my first paycheck was the largest I had ever received. Spitefully I told her I was going to give 10% of “my money” to tithing, although because we were so heavily in debt, I was doing it with a bad heart. The following paycheck was probably the second largest check I had ever received. A thought came to me that maybe our Heavenly Father is trying to show me something and so I tithed 10% again of my next check. Over the course of the next year, I began to tithe 10% of every paycheck cheerfully and our Heavenly Father allowed us to pay off 100% of our debt. The week we paid off our debt my company drastically reduced our commission structure. This was the first time were I felt our Heavenly Father was trying to show me to trust in Him. I am NOT trying to say that if you tithe you will get rich or pay off your debt. I am just saying that for me I feel like He was trying to show me to finally trust in Him.

We moved to a different state and our old church helped us find a new church there. It wasn’t like our old church though. People were nice but almost none of them really cared about us. We didn’t fit into the mold in our Sunday school class because neither of us went to the conservative baptist colleges they all did. You could easily tell we were different. There was one couple in the class that was nice to us and one family with grown children at the church that treated us like family, constantly inviting us over and having us sit next to them during the service,  and that was the reason we stayed. Overall, there was zero growth and it was another arrogant preacher leading blind followers.

We moved to a different state again and found another church home. We enjoyed our Sunday school class because the people were nice but the church services were always generic messages on love. It got to the point that we’d get to church and I would jokingly whisper to my wife as the preacher walked up to the podium, “Open your Bibles. Today we are going to speak on love.” While we were at this church I started watching a pastor online who didn’t believe in a pretrib rapture. I would try telling my wife things this preacher said and she would always say he was wrong. When I would ask her why, she’d say how her pastor growing up said it was a pretrib rapture. I’d tell her I didn’t care about what her pastor said and that she needed to show me in the Bible. She discovered she couldn’t show me and realized there was definitely no pretrib rapture. This is where we also started questioning the shape of the earth. This is where she finally started letting go of the things that had been shoved into her head her whole life. She realized maybe her preacher wasn’t always right. We ended up moving again but before we moved we had the opportunity to talk to one of the preachers on staff. Something came up about the Old Testament and he told me, “Well the Old Testament is completely abolished now.” We were in shock. We didn’t respond to him but even not being in the Word like we should and not knowing much we knew this was wrong and couldn’t believe we spent two years of our life in a church that didn’t believe the Old Testament was relevant anymore.

After we moved we visited a string of churches but there was red flags in every single one of them. In some they were obsessed with money saying how they became successful once they came to follow God. Some were obsessed with politicians and political agendas. Some were obsessed with being in Christian movies. They spent so much time and resources on their children’s ministries and their special events but rarely any time in the Word. They were constantly doing Bible studies where men told them how to interpret the scriptures instead of reading the scripture together and asking our Heavenly Father to lead. No church actually seemed to address sin because of grace. They were obsessed with church membership. Some churches preached that we could not deny our Father’s Holy Spirit. That once we were “saved” we could not fall away. We praise our Father in Heaven for giving us the discernment to look into all of these things and really study the truth and lies.

When Covid hit my wife had a spiritual breakdown. She was terrified of the antichrist and end times. She was for sure that’s what was happening and since she fully believed we’d be here for the tribulation, she was terrified for our children. We also realized that it seemed pretty obvious if this was the end times America is Babylon based on what scriptures say. She’d have dreams of followers being sawn in half, burnt, and shot. Night after night she’d dream of intense persecution. But during all of this she truly feared our Heavenly Father and He gave us wisdom. We were hungry and reading scripture like our lives depended on it. We’d take our Bibles everywhere. Every time we read we’d see more.

The Sabbath was our first big eye opener. As we read through scripture we started seeing it everywhere. Since day 7 of creation this day has been blessed.  You can read more of our thoughts on the Sabbath and scripture on it here.

After this we discovered that we are actually Israelites and that it looks like there will be a future exodus. My wife was reading through Isaiah 11 and saw this. After we saw it in Isaiah we saw it everywhere. There will be a future exodus but first there will be captivity and tribulation. We realized there is no rapture at all and for the first time ever the end times made sense. It was all coming together scripturally. We couldn’t believe that after years of seeking from churches and pastors our Heavenly Father showed us through His word and not men. You can see more on scripture about a future exodus here.

Christmas and Easter came next. We had already given up Halloween a few years prior because it was pretty obvious this was not a holiday that would honor our Heavenly Father. Christmas was always a struggle in our home. I grew up as a Santa fanatic. With our kids we’d lay out the cookies and milk and everything. Over the years my wife started feeling weird about it. We realized the tree was pagan so we put up a cross instead but that didn’t feel right either. Finally, as my wife was reading about Hezekiah and realized that what our Heavenly Father told the Israelites in the Old Testament still pertained to us she couldn’t do it. This was not how He asks us to celebrate Him. You can read more about holidays, holy days, and scripture on it here.

We really started digging into creation and the earth at this time too and realized the scriptures contradict current science. You can read more about that here.

At this point we stopped going to church and stayed home and studied scriptures on the Sabbath. We realized, through reading scripture, that if this was the end times the worst thing we could do is listen to preachers. We had never in our lives grown like we had at this time. We turned off the YouTube preachers and stopped the commentary. We just wanted wisdom from above and prayed for that every single time we opened His Word. As we read through Isaiah we realized that His laws are forever. Isaiah 65 and 66 made us realize that we need to be eating Biblically clean as it speaks about those eating pork and unclean foods in the last days. You can see more about the law and biblical eating here.

We still are growing and learning. We are still blinded to so many truths and ask for our eyes to be open and to have wisdom every day. We don’t ever open our Bibles ever without praying that our Heavenly Father would give us wisdom. We still don’t understand so much. We don’t understand what we are commanded to call our Heavenly Father but we do see that our Savior says to pray to our Father in heaven so until we see that one clearly that is what we say. I’m hoping we will see that soon. It’s amazing to us to look back at our walk and see how good our Father has been to us when we allow Him to lead us. We will never say we know everything but we will try to point you to scripture and prayer in finding truths.  We spent so much of our lives letting men blindly lead us. Once we broke away from that and scales started falling from our eyes we so badly wanted others to as well. Seek Him.