Transcription
An 8-year-old boy climbs a tree beside a seawall in his backyard. The waves from the shipping canal crash rhythmically against the concrete barrier, and he's up there talking to God. That little boy was me. And even then, in the midst of a childhood that was anything but normal, I felt drawn to something greater than myself. I couldn't have known then that my journey would take me through the darkness of a doomsday cult, through the wasteland of atheism, and finally home to Christ.
You see, I was raised as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. Some of you may know that, maybe not. If you're not familiar with them, let me paint you a picture of what that meant. From the time I could understand words, I was taught that Armageddon was coming. Not at some abstract distant future, but soon, any day now. The end of the world wasn't just a theological concept. It was a living, breathing fear that followed me everywhere.
I had this recurring nightmare as a child that still makes my heart race when I think about it. In the dream, I'm running, always running, as fireballs rain down from heaven. The sky is on fire, buildings are crumbling, and through the chaos, I can see angels swooping down from the clouds. They're picking up the saved ones, carrying them off to safety. But they're not coming for me. I run faster, my little legs pumping as hard as they can, but the angels just pass me by. Just when I think all hope is lost, just when the terror becomes unbearable, I feel strong arms scoop me up from behind. An angel has caught me, and we're rising into the sky. That's when I'd wake up drenched in cold sweat. My heart pounding like a drum.
That dream captures what it's like to grow up in a cult. You're always running, always afraid you're not good enough, always wondering if you'll be among the saved. The Witnesses taught us that only 144,000 people would go to heaven out of all the billions who ever lived. The rest of us, well, if we were lucky and obedient enough, we might get to live forever on a paradise earth. But first, we had to survive Armageddon. And that meant being in good standing with the organization when the end came.
By the time I was eight, I wasn't just attending meetings at what we called the Kingdom Hall. They don't like to call it a church. I was on stage. It started small, just reading a Bible passage from the platform. But soon, I was giving talks, standing in front of the congregation, trying to sound confident, even though my knees were shaking. Looking back now, I can see God's hand in that early training. He was preparing me to speak, giving me a gift I'd use decades later in ways I never could have imagined. As I grew older, I became known as a good speaker. They sent me all over to give Sunday talks, though we never called them sermons in the cult. That would have been too much like the churches that we were taught to despise, so we used different words for everything.
But let me tell you about the home I'd returned to after those meetings. My mother was an alcoholic and not the kind who quietly nursed a bottle in the corner. She was abusive, unpredictable, a storm that could break over our heads at any moment. My sister couldn't take it. She ran away when she was just 15. Can you imagine a 15-year-old girl deciding that whatever was out there in the world had to be better than what was at home? My father was a different story entirely. He was kind, gentle, the kind of man who'd give you the shirt off his back, even if it was his last one. He tried to protect us from mom, but he worked long hours, and we were left alone with her most of the time.
When I was about nine, she finally left. Just packed up, walked out, and you know what? It was the best thing that could have happened to us. Peace descended on our house like a blanket of fresh snow. Life got much better after that. But here's where the story gets complicated in that special way that only happens in high-control religious groups. My parents had been dysfellowshipped. That's Witness speak for excommunicated because of my mother's drinking. And because my dad had the audacity to defend her in front of the elders. Think about that for a second. My father, this good and decent man, was cast out of his spiritual community for standing by his wife even though she was struggling with an addiction. That's what Jesus would have done, right? Yeah. Well, apparently the elders didn't see it that way. After mom left, dad was eventually reinstated. The elders even apologized and wanted to make him an elder again. But my father, having seen behind that curtain, uh-uh, he said no. For a long time, he said no. But eventually, being the good man he was, who wanted to help people, he decided to serve again. He forgave them. Even though they put him through hell.
Despite all this dysfunction, despite the fear and the nightmares and the chaos at home, I was deeply spiritual. That image I started with, the boy in the tree by the seawall, that was my sanctuary. I'd climb up there and pour my heart out to God. I didn't understand why things were the way they were, but I believed he was listening. I believed he cared.
Fast forward through the years. I got married within the faith. I adopted my oldest daughter, had two more children with my first wife. I was a good Witness, following all the rules, checking all the boxes. I was still giving talks in different congregations all over the place. Despite the stress of my cult-driven life, I loved putting together words to try and uplift the congregation. I would pray intensely before every talk, asking God to help me inspire at least one person in the audience, motivating them to love and good works.
But then my marriage began to fall apart. Now, I won't go into the details. It's not just my story to tell. And I have children who don't need to hear about their parents' failures on the internet. But here's what matters. According to Jehovah's Witness doctrine, you can only get divorced and remarried if your spouse commits adultery. That's it. Absolutely no other reason is acceptable at all whatsoever. The Witnesses take Jesus' words in Matthew 19:9, "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery," and they turn it into an iron law with no room for nuance or compassion. But when I started researching what scholars actually say about divorce in the first century, when I looked at the historical context, the broader biblical narrative, what Jesus was trying to prevent, I realized that the Witnesses had turned a principle about the sanctity of marriage into a weapon that kept people trapped in destructive situations.
That was my first crack in the foundation. If they were wrong about this, what else were they wrong about? Once you start pulling on that thread in a cult, the whole fabric unravels faster than you can imagine. I researched their failed predictions about the end of the world, 1914, 1925, 1975, and others. I looked into their flip-flopping doctrines about blood transfusions, organ transplants, higher education. I discovered how they've been affiliated with the United Nations as an NGO while simultaneously teaching that the UN was the wild beast of Revelation. Try to imagine what that felt like for me. For four decades, four decades, I've been absolutely certain about everything. I knew exactly what God wanted, exactly how the world worked, exactly what the future held. And then just like that, the house of cards collapsed. I was left standing in the rubble, not knowing what was true anymore.
Now, I didn't immediately abandon Christianity. How could I? It was woven into the very fabric of my being. As twisted as the version was that I'd been taught, I devoured books by biblical scholars trying to separate the real Jesus from Watchtower's version. Their perspectives were fascinating, even enlightening. But doubt had taken root in my heart. I mean, after all, I'd been completely convinced the Witnesses were right. And look how that turned out. How could I trust myself to believe anything?
That's when I flirted with atheism. I tried to see the world through purely naturalistic eyes. No God, no spirit, just atoms and molecules bumping into each other in an indifferent universe. You know what? That didn't work for me either. I've been a software developer since I was a kid. I wrote my first commercial program at 14. My dad, God bless him, even though we were on government assistance after his job injury left him disabled, would max out credit cards to buy me computers and programming books because he saw my aptitude. The point is I understood math, probability, information theory. The idea that random chance could produce the staggering complexity of even a single cell, let alone consciousness itself in a finite universe over a finite period of time. The numbers just didn't add up. The more I read the materialist explanations, the more they sounded like just another kind of faith, another religion. Faith in multiverses we can't detect. Faith in emergence we can't explain. Faith in chances that defy calculation.
So there I was, having left Christ, having rejected atheism, but still feeling that deep spiritual hunger. I turned east. I studied Buddhism, sitting in meditation till my legs went numb, trying to empty my mind and achieve enlightenment. I read the Dao De Jing until I could quote whole passages. I practiced mindfulness, living in the present moment, letting thoughts drift by like clouds. And you know what? There was some wisdom to be found there. I'm not going to lie about that. The Buddhist insights into suffering and attachment, Lao Tzu's paradoxes about strength and weakness, the Hindu concepts of dharma and karma, they reminded me of what Paul said about those who don't know law doing the things of the law. But for all their wisdom, it felt like trying to wear someone else's clothes. They didn't fit right. Something was missing.
So, I called myself agnostic, which is really just a fancy way of saying, "I don't know." But even that was a lie. Deep down, I knew there was something more. I could feel it. I just didn't know what to call it anymore. I kept reading, kept searching, kept talking to whatever was out there. I even kept reading the Bible, approaching it now as literature, as history, as philosophy, anything but the word of God.
Here's the thing that amazes me looking back, though. Through all of this, the cult, the collapse of faith, the atheism, the Eastern spirituality, the agnosticism, I could never bring myself to say a bad word about Jesus. Never. I just couldn't. I read Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus" and how Jesus became God. I studied the historical critical method. I learned about redaction and form criticism. But none of it could diminish the figure of Jesus in my mind. If anything, stripping away the layers of tradition and dogma only made him more compelling. I see now what I couldn't see then. Though I had left Christ, he had never left me.
You remember that poem, "Footprints in the Sand"? My aunt had it on a plaque in our house when I was young. I must have read that thing a hundred times. One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky. In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints. Other times there was one set of footprints. This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints. So I said to the Lord, "You promised me, Lord, that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life, there have only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me." The Lord replied, "The times when you have seen only one set of footprints is when I carried you."
That poem haunted me during my years in the wilderness. I thought I was walking alone, making my own footprints in the sand. I thought God had abandoned me, or maybe that he'd never been there at all. But I was wrong.
About a year and a half ago, I was standing in a grocery store. Nothing special about the day. I was just picking up some milk, some bread, some fruit. I was standing in the produce section looking at apples when it hit me. And when I say "it," I mean love with a capital L. It wasn't an emotion I was feeling. It was a presence, a reality, a truth that suddenly became as obvious as the floor beneath my feet. I was loved. Completely, unconditionally, eternally loved. And not just loved, I was filled with love, overflowing with it. I looked at the other shoppers, strangers whose names I didn't even know, whose stories I would never hear, and I loved them. Not in some abstract "love your neighbor" kind of way, but really loved them. I felt like I'd known them forever, like they were family I'd been separated from and was finally seeing again. It only lasted maybe two minutes. Two minutes that changed everything. I managed to hold it together until I got to my car and then I completely broke down. Tears streaming down my face, shoulders shaking, the whole thing. Because in that moment, I understood those footprints in the sand over the past seven years, they weren't mine. They were his. Christ had been carrying me the whole time.
I drove home in a daze and pulled out my Bible, not to study it academically or critique it historically, but to meet the one who just revealed himself to me in the produce section of a grocery store. And this time when I read, everything was different. The words weren't just ancient texts anymore. They were alive, speaking directly to my heart. Paul's words in Colossians 1:27 hit me like lightning. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." Christ in me. Not Christ in heaven waiting to judge. Not Christ in the organization accessible only through the proper channels. Christ in me. The hope of glory dwelling in this broken, doubting, searching heart.
I spent the next year rebuilding my faith from the ground up. Not the faith of my childhood built on fear and control. This was something new, something real, something that could withstand doubt and questions and mystery. I wrote about it, prayed about it, studied it from every angle. That work eventually became my book, "The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ." Even six months ago though, I had no intention of sharing this story publicly or starting this channel. I'd already run one YouTube channel, my XJW Analyzer channel, helping people escape the Witnesses. I figured I'd done my part.
But then I met this woman at work. She was going through incredibly difficult circumstances, the kind that would make most people rage at God or abandon faith altogether. But she didn't. Her face shone like a beacon in the darkness. Talking to her, I kept thinking about all the comments I'd seen on my XJW channel. So many people who'd escaped the cult but didn't know what to believe anymore. So many who were lost in their own wilderness, seeing only one set of footprints and feeling abandoned. And every one of them, I saw my own reflection.
That's when I knew God had given me the ability to speak, trained me from childhood, even in the midst of a cult. He'd given me a logical mind that could think through complex issues. He carried me through seven years of spiritual wandering. Seven years. I find that number deeply meaningful. And then he brought me home. How could I not share that? How could I not use what he'd given me to help others who are walking the same dark path?
Do I have imposter syndrome? Oh, you bet I do. Sometimes I'll be driving for work. I do a lot of driving in my job. And this voice in my head starts up. "Who do you think you are? After everything you've said and done, after all your doubts and denials, you think you can help people with their faith. You're a fraud." But I've learned to recognize that voice. It's not from God. It's the enemy trying to silence what God wants to say through me. Because here's what I've discovered. God doesn't call the qualified. He qualifies the called. My brokenness, my journey through doubt, my years in the wilderness, they weren't disqualifications. They were preparation.
Think about it. Would you rather learn about faith from someone who's never doubted or from someone who's been where you are? Would you rather hear about God's faithfulness from someone who's never tested it or from someone who's walked away and been lovingly pursued and brought home? The Apostle Paul understood this in 2 Corinthians 12:9. He shares what the Lord told him, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Our weakness, our brokenness, our stories of failure and redemption, these aren't things to hide. They're the very channels through which God's power flows. Look at all the stories of the apostles. Think about Peter, who denied Jesus three times. Thomas, who wouldn't believe without proof. Paul himself, who persecuted Christians before becoming the greatest missionary in history. God has always used broken people. It's kind of his thing.
The emails I get, the comments on the videos, the messages from people who've read the book, they all confirm what I've felt that day talking to the woman at work. God wants to use my story to help others, not because I'm special, but because I'm not. Because if he can reach someone as stubborn and skeptical as me, if he can pursue someone who literally tried on atheism like a coat, if he can reveal himself in a grocery store to someone who'd given up on ever knowing truth again, then he can reach anyone.
Here's what I want you to understand. If you're in that dark place right now, if you're seeing only one set of footprints and feeling abandoned, if you've been hurt by religion, betrayed by those who claim to speak for God, left wondering if any of it's real, you're not alone. You're never alone. Christ doesn't abandon his sheep. Jesus said in John 10:28-29, "I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand." You catch that? You're held in a double grip. Christ's hand and the Father's hand. Even when you can't feel it, even when you think you've let go, you're still held.
The truth is, we all have times when we see only one set of footprints. Maybe you're in that season right now. Maybe you've been hurt by the church, or you've lost someone you love, or you're facing circumstances that don't make any sense. Maybe you prayed and prayed and heard only silence. Maybe you've even told God, "You're done. That you can't believe anymore." I've been there. I've said those words. I've felt that emptiness. But here's what I learned in that grocery store. God's love isn't dependent on our faith. His presence isn't contingent on our belief. He's there in our doubt just as much as in our certainty. He's there in our anger just as much as our praise. He's there in our wandering just as much as in our obedience.
The prophet Isaiah captured this beautifully. "Could a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you. See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands." Isaiah 49:15-16. You're engraved on God's hands. Think about that. Not written in pencil, not noted in some heavenly database. Engraved, permanent, unchangeable.
My journey from cult to atheist to agnostic. Christ taught me something vital. God is bigger than our boxes. He's bigger than our doubts. He's bigger than our mental frameworks and theological systems. The Witnesses tried to contain him in their organization. The atheists tried to explain him away with science. The Eastern religions tried to dissolve him into everything and nothing. But God refuses to be contained, explained, or dissolved. He is who he is, the great I AM. And here's the beautiful thing. He meets us where we are.
He met me in my childhood fear, speaking peace through the waves against the seawall. He met me in my devastation when my faith collapsed, preserving something in me that couldn't speak ill of Jesus. He met me in my intellectual searching, revealing himself through the very scholarship I thought would explain him away. And finally, he met me in a grocery store of all places, flooding me with a love that transcends understanding. He'll meet you, too, wherever you are.
Maybe it won't be dramatic. Maybe it'll be in the quiet whisper that Elijah heard or in the still small voice that speaks when everything else is silent. Maybe it'll be through a person who shows you Christ's love in action. Maybe it'll be through a verse that suddenly comes alive or a sunset that takes your breath away or a moment of peace in the midst of chaos. The key is to stay open even in your doubt. Stay open even in your anger. Stay open even in your wandering. Stay open because Christ is pursuing you with a love that will not let you go. You can run, but you can't outrun him. You can hide, but you can't hide from the one who knows you better than you know yourself. You can deny, but you can't change the truth that you are loved with an everlasting love.
So, if you're seeing only one set of footprints today, take heart. They're not yours. They're his. He's carrying you through this valley, and he will set your feet on solid ground again. Trust the process. Trust the journey. Most of all, trust the one who walks with you even when you can't see him.
The boy who climbed the tree by the seawall is still talking to God. Only now the fear is gone. Now he knows that the waves that crash against our barriers are no match for the love that holds us. Now he knows that our nightmares of judgment are swallowed up in the reality of grace. Now he knows that Christ in us is the hope of glory. Truly, your story isn't over. Your journey isn't finished. And the one who began a good work in you will carry it on until completion in the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6. That's not wishful thinking. That's a promise from the one who cannot lie, who will not fail, who loves you more than you can possibly imagine. You are loved. You are held. You are never alone. And someday when you look back on this difficult season, you'll see it clearly. There was only one set of footprints because he was carrying you all along.
Let this be our prayer. Abba, Father, thank you for never leaving us, even when we leave you. Thank you for pursuing us with a love that won't let go. Thank you for carrying us when we're too weak to walk, too hurt to believe, too lost to find our way home. Lord, for everyone listening who sees only one set of footprints right now, let them feel your arms beneath them. Let them know they're carried, they're loved, they're yours. Restore their hope, rebuild their faith, reveal yourself to them in whatever way they need to see you. And give us all the courage to share our stories, broken as they are, so others might see your faithfulness in our failures, your strength in our weakness, your love in our wandering. We trust you Lord with our past, our present, and our future in Jesus name. Amen.
I wanted to take a second to tell you about my book which expands on what I'm talking about today. "The Broken Mirror: Rediscovering Our True Nature in Christ" will transform how you see yourself forever. Stop living as a struggling sinner trying to be good enough and discover you're already a beloved child of God with his divine nature flowing through you. This book will free you from shame, give you unshakable identity, and show you how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within. The book shows how this story unfolds from Genesis to Revelation, and teaches you to live from rest, see others as fellow image bearers, and step into your true calling as a radiant reflector of divine light. Your daily struggles will become opportunities for God's nature to shine through you. Get ready to live the abundant life Jesus promised. The link to the book is in the video description. Hard copy, Kindle, and audiobook versions are all available. May God bless your journey along his path for you. [Music]