Chris vividly remembers the Ten Commandments plaque that hung in his parent’s house when he was young. And for a while, his folks regularly attended a Pentecostal church—but eventually, alcoholism took a toll on the family. “A lot of bad things happened,” Chris says. And he ended up blaming most of it on God.
His interest in drawing eventually led Chris to a career as a tattoo artist. He bought his own shop and made a good profit; he also made money from his sideline business of selling drugs. “I never took drugs, but I didn’t understand how I was helping them to destroy their own lives.”
However, when Chris met Rebecca, things changed. “She gave me an ultimatum,” he explains. “ ‘Either the drugs go, or I go.’ ” Chris immediately dropped the drugs.
Early in their marriage, the two attended a Pentecostal church. But Chris didn’t feel accepted in the church family. Many in the congregation even avoided him. “With all my tattoos, most would not even shake my hand,” he says. Although he tried to participate, Chris was excluded from many activities and eventually lost interest. While his wife continued to attend, Chris went back to his old ways—bad movies, cussing, fighting, tattooing, and “raising Cain.”
Chris wanted nothing more to do with church. “I had lost all interest in God. Everything was going great for me, so I thought I had no need of God. I had the woman of my dreams, my own business, and plenty of money.”
Finding Truth Online
Over the next five years, Rebecca begged Chris to return to church. But when some church members suggested to Rebecca that if she didn’t speak in tongues, she wasn’t saved, she was tempted to give up on church too. That’s when she began studying her Bible for hours a day, searching for assurance of her salvation.
During this time of seeking, Rebecca uncovered surprising truths. First, she discovered there was no biblical support for the “secret rapture.” When she announced her findings to Chris, he was indignant. He says, “I told her she was crazy and that I would call my grandfather, who was a minister, to show her where she was wrong. But when I made the phone call, to my surprise, he had no answer for the Bible verses she had given me.”
Another day Rebecca told him, “Chris, I think the Sabbath is on Saturday.”
Chris shares, “As we looked together at all the texts, we couldn’t believe it. We thought we had found some secret that no one else in the world knew about.” Their quest for truth soon led Chris to search further online.
Pastor Doug’s sermons on YouTube especially caught their attention, and they watched them over and over for months. The messages of Amazing Facts were so powerful that one evening, Chris decided that he would go back to church—but it would be the church that Pastor Doug belonged to. Chris and his wife had never heard of Sabbathkeepers even existing, but when Chris made a call to a local church, he was warmly received. They have since joined that very congregation. Even better, Chris has become a Bible worker and has regular speaking engagements sharing God’s last-day message in West Virginia and Kentucky. He is currently studying religion with a dream of becoming a pastor.
Thank you for your faithful giving, which made it possible for Chris to find uplifting Bible truth online through Amazing Facts—and a new life in Christ!