Pastor John… I would love to share with you my testimony … As I shared with you in a previous email, I was raised in a Baptist family.. My Father a baptist preacher.. However, my Father was not a normal Baptist preacher… He actually desired to live for God and pressed upon me the need to serve him as well as living right… He believed in Holiness and lived as close to God as possible for a southern Baptist…I was not raised listening to Billy Graham but remember listening to Jimmy Swaggart, if you can believe that… My Father did not believe in tongues but did believe in the anointing …. After being led to say the sinners prayer and become SAVED for the millionth time by my Father, I was now 20 yrs of age and trying to live as best I could in a marriage that was headed for disaster…. However, my wife was Pentecostal not filled with the Spirit but Church of God… The story gets better… I had always been interested in prophecy and the rapture of the church… My mother n law worked for Golden Flake.. I was workin for Alabama Graphics… She helped me get on at Golden Flake… I met several friends at Golden Flake that I sat with during break… One of them was a strange man named Kevin…A few days go by and a man enters the breakroom named Bobby.. This man had a demeanor about him that was unlike any I had ever seen before…. He sat down at the table and began to talk to Kevin about the Lord… I was like what is going on??? I didn’t know Kevin was a Christian to begin with based on the worldly conversations we had.. He had seemed a little strange like me but he begin to talk to Bobby as though he had spiritual authority… I was intrigued to say the least with Bobbys love and the change that had taken place in his life was something I desired… At Golden Flake, we had a 3 month probation period… We could not bid on another job until that period was completed… So right at the time that my probation period was completed a cook job came open.. At Golden Flake, a cook job is big money and one of the best jobs… So it would be impossible for me to get that job with only 3 months with the company, right??? Wrong… I bid on it and got it cause no one else bid on it??? It gets better… I was placed on this new job training with Bobby… Bobby like me had been raised in the Baptist church, which was a great testimony to me… He shared with me his testimony of how he had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues… Now I had heard of speaking in tongues… My wife, her family, and my best friend were all Pentecostal, but I had no idea what the Baptism of the Holy Spirit was… I realized that he was sincere but I was very skeptical… One thing he also liked to talk about was the rapture of the church… Now that was a subject I was also interested as I told you earlier…He had a new take on the rapture, something we called the Prewrath rapture.. This led me to intense Bible study and a understanding of prophetic scripture that I never knew existed… I had questions that he encouraged me to share with other people…I ask my dad and my father n law many questions about the rapture… None could disprove or convince me that what I was seeing was not the truth…This new found doctrine led me to a intense Bible study on the day of the Lord… Because that is the basis of this teaching…I noticed that the outpouring of the Spirit according to Joel and Acts would be followed by the day of the Lord… I was learning that the day of the Lord was the day of his wrath and the rapture as we call it…This new found truth led me to understand that the gifts of the Spirit had not ceased… My dad said it ended with the Bible.. The Bible seems to indicate that the gifts would continue until the Lords coming…So I began to study about the Holy Spirit Baptism as I studied about the rapture… God started revealing to me things in scripture that I never realized … Now Bobby was a man of great love for the Lord and seem to be very happy… He talked about the joy of the Holy Ghost which made me desire to feel that joy … Me and my wife started goin to a charismatic church about a year or so after intense Bible … They were teaching about the Baptism of the Holy Spirit if you can believe that… One Sunday, maybe a few weeks later, they had special prayer for anyone that needed it… My wife encouraged me to go up and get special prayer for my dad.. I was a little scared cause I had never had hands laid on me… Never even been up to the altar in a Pentecostal type church.. But I decided that I would give God a chance and when the preacher laid hands on me, I felt the power of God for the first time in my life… I went to the floor and I was no longer skeptical… For the next week, I was seeking the Lord for the Holy Ghost… I prayed continuously … I was repenting… I was trying to stay away from sin as much as possible… I was hungry and wanted to be filled… So the next Sunday, I was ready… I don’t even remember what the message was… All I could think about was receiving the Holy Ghost… When it came time for altar call… I began to cry and continue to repent as I went up front… The preacher said call on Jesus and he will give it to you… As he laid hands on me, I began to feel the fire of the holy Ghost burning through me and begin to speak in tongues… I fell out under the power of God and when I came to my feet.. I felt like a new man… Full of Joy and Love… I could not wait to fill that power and to fill that joy again and again… I have more to share …. My story is still goin … I don’t know what is next
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Dear Brother John,
Thank you for letting us hear your testimony. It, along with the blood of Christ (=the holy ghost), will overcome the world and everything in it (Rev. 12:11).
Pastor John