Brother Andy's Testimony

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00:00
OK, so I'm going to make a couple remarks before I go into my testimony.
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And the reason I want to do that is, you know, as Brother Keith and Brother Mike and I talked about having this, we wanted to make sure that we wanted to try to send out in a certain way, so that's why I was asked to go first.
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I wanted to say a couple things about testimonies in general, and then I'll go into my testimony in some detail.
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So the first thing I want to say is if you ever have an opportunity to give your testimony, share your testimony, whatever way you want to word it, and it's in a setting like this, then I would suggest that you keep notes.
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And just make notes for yourself.
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The reason why I say that, especially when it comes to testimonies, I think it's easy for us to get kind of lost in the flow of our lives, and I think notes will help us because there's something that I wanted to ask us to think about as we do this GoFo, whether we do it bi-monthly or whatever we do, it's this.
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Testimonies many times are the ways in which people say how they got saved.
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And I'm not saying that's wrong, but what I'm asking us to think about as we were to give our testimony, it doesn't end, our testimony shouldn't end with, I got saved.
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Our testimony really is, or really should be, how God took us from not knowing him to knowing him, and what we know about him at the present time.
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In other words, many people will give a testimony and say I was this or I was that, or I did this or I did that, and God saved me, and that's my testimony.
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And certainly there's a lot of work in talking about how we came to Christ, but I do think it's important, essential for us, not only to give a testimony of how we came to be saved, but what was the process that God used, not only in our lives, but in our minds, to bring us to the truth.
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And so that's really why I wanted to go first in that sense.
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Don't misunderstand me, brothers and sisters.
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If we really understand truth, we've all been saved from sin.
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Agree? If any of us know Christ, we've been saved from the deadness of sin.
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And so with that in mind, I think it's important for us not to only highlight that aspect of what we were.
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Whether you want to say I was a drunk or a drug addict, or this or that, or I was given to this thing, which really should be how God has taken us from not knowing Him to knowing Him, and what that process was.
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I think that's, in a sense, sometimes missing testimonies of how we come to know truth.
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And so with that in mind, I would like for us to think about that as we go forward.
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If you are going to give your testimony, just keep those things in mind.
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Maybe just keep some notes on what you want to say in that thought of how God began to move in your heart and your soul to bring you out of darkness and into the marvelous light of the gospel of Christ.
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So, with those thoughts, this is the background, I'll give you my testimony to some extent.
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Because I think there's aspects of our testimony that we couldn't possibly explain.
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And I think we all will note their witness that God, in many ways, His thoughts are so far above ours, and His ways are so far above ours, and that no two of us come into the light of Christ in the same way.
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So I think that's something to think about.
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So, my testimony will start with this way.
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It really is my earliest thoughts.
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And I thought about this, and I said, well, if I'm going to give a testimony, it's not just the things that immediately took place before I became a Christian or a rabbi.
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I thought of how, from the very beginning, as far back as I can go in my mind, what had taken place in my mind, in my life, and in my heart, to bring me to the place where I am today.
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So I thought, really, under the thought of early thoughts, as many of you know, I was brought up in an Italian neighborhood in France.
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And it was thoroughly and almost completely Roman Catholic.
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And so as I remember, as far back as I could, I went to the days when I was forced, and I'll use that word, forced, to go to a Roman Catholic church.
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Just to date it to some extent, if you remember, many, many decades ago, the Catholic church was doing the mass in Latin, and I was an altar boy.
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Not by choice, but basically because everybody else in my family wanted me to be an altar boy.
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And so I participated in that.
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And so my earliest thoughts go back to that of Roman Catholicism.
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And I will say this about that, as I think about what took place then.
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It really was more of what I needed to do than what I believed.
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In other words, what I'm saying is, even in my youngest thoughts concerning God and things above, those thoughts really never entered my mind.
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When they entered my mind, it was what I was being forced to do.
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Do this, don't do that.
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If you grew up in a Roman Catholic environment, you know, you didn't eat fish on a Friday.
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There was many things you weren't allowed to do, and you had to do certain things on other days.
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And I never really understood that.
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I felt like it was more of a punishment than a blessing.
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And it really was something that I was forced to do, and it didn't come from my heart to leave.
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Not that I don't like fish, but I almost resented the fact that I had to follow someone else's rules on certain days, at certain times, and things like that.
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So I guess that would be my earliest thoughts concerning it.
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And again, I say to you, at that time, my thoughts about God were little.
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It was more of my fear.
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By the way, I went to Catholic church, I mean, Catholic school.
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And my thoughts of God were more that the nuns beat me up, than the thoughts of God.
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It's just the way it was.
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I can go into more detail about that when I want.
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And I would say those were my earliest thoughts.
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And that took place probably until I was about, best I can remember, I was about 13.
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And at 13 or so, somewhere in there, I remember saying to my parents, who at that time were just phenomenal Roman Catholics, I said to them that I felt like I was old enough that I didn't have to do this Roman Catholic thing.
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I didn't have to go to church on a Sunday, and I didn't have to go to a concussion.
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And that's another bizarre thing, my friends.
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You've never done that, but you get it.
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The carillon opens up, you've got to do the rosary beads.
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It's rather spooky, by the way.
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That was my impression.
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But as I got to that age, around 13 or 14, I remember saying to my parents, you know what, I think I'm just going to stay home.
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And my parents went along with that.
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So that would be my earliest thoughts.
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And again, it really wasn't about God.
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It was more about religion and religious activities and things like that.
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Then I would say that after that, probably for the next decade, from maybe age 13 to I know it would have been until I was 23, I guess there was a decade in which, having turned away from Roman Catholicism, because I felt there was nothing real to it, it was just outward forms, for that period of time, I created my own God.
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I had an agreement with it.
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It wasn't the God of Roman Catholicism.
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As a matter of fact, I'm not sure.
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It was really God of my imagination.
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I'll say that because I had this thought, well, God understands me, and I understand Him, and no one else has this agreement like I have with God.
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And I really created my own God.
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He allowed me to do certain things that I wanted to do.
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He didn't forbid me from doing many things, by the way, because I would have just created a different God if He did.
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So there was no sense of guilt about doing wrong things.
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There was no sense of sorrow sitting against Him.
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It basically was, I'm going to live my life the way I want to live it, and God is okay with it because ultimately He knows me like no one else knows me, and it's okay.
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Everything is good.
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And that went on for, like I said, quite a bit of time, probably a solid 10 years, and at that time, in between that time, me and Candy got married.
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As many of you know, we had kids in multitudes in very short periods of time.
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Candy was pregnant for the first three years of our marriage.
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And then I'll go into a little bit later, but that pretty much would take me from my teen years to at that point where, you know, early 20s, out working in the world, providing for family, and again, no real thoughts about that, and any thoughts that I had, they were mine and no one could take them from me.
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And that's something that I think many people would have to say, if they're being honest, that their own thoughts and their own experience, to them, is all that's necessary.
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And so I certainly attended that program.
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I'm not going to go into the details of what I did, of the way in which I lived my life, other than to say I lived an ungodly life.
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Basically, I did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and with whoever I wanted.
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So there was no restraint, other than restraints of I didn't have the money to do it, or I had no work, or this, that, and the other.
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So that takes me now to my first real contact.
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And when I say my first real contact, having been brought up in a Roman Catholic family, there were Bibles all over the house, but they were never opened.
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And certainly in those years when I had my own God in my own mind, I never had Bibles opened.
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So when I come to the first real contact, I was in a team since New York.
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It was a longshoreman driver's warehouse workers.
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It was the soprano, kind of, Coopsie Jr.
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that you see on TV.
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And it really was an ungodly environment.
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I mean, big time.
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There were all kinds of activities that went on.
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And in that environment, I made friends with a couple of guys.
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And they were pretty much just like me.
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They partied.
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Did what they wanted to do.
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Took care of their families.
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Went to work every day.
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But they were just like me, and we got along real well.
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In fact, we started a car ride together just to save on gas and just for the convenience of it.
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Well, one of them was exposed to the gospel.
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And his heart was lit up.
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And he began to talk to me and the other friend that I had of this group of three.
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Well, he talked for a while to the other friend, and that one came to Christ.
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And so now I had both of them coming at me with the gospel.
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And I would say that we went from friends to foes very fast.
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Because my argument with them was, don't come at me with this stuff.
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I know who you are.
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I've been with you.
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I've done the things that you did, and now you're telling me that you're different.
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And it just doesn't fit into my group.
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And that went on, and they kept coming after me, by the way.
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You know those Christians.
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They don't stop.
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And they kept coming after me with the gospel.
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And ultimately, I stopped talking to them.
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I stopped having interactions between families because they had kids and we had young kids.
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And we broke up all fellowship, all friendship.
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And I would say about a year passed.
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And they were really good about giving me space.
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But at the same time, every time they had a chance, they talked to me about Christ.
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They talked to me about God.
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They talked to me about the Bible.
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They talked to me about eternity.
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Well, that went on for about a year.
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After about a year, and I'm not going to go into too much detail.
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Some of you already know the details of my life as far as that goes.
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But I will say that something very tragic happened in my life and Candy's life.
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And at that point, I never felt guilt or sin my whole life.
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And even at that point, when this event took place, I, well, I will tell you.
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You lost a son.
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A three-year-old son.
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And at that point, I was lost.
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I wasn't guilty of anything.
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I was lost.
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And I knew I was lost.
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And I was empty.
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And I had never been empty before.
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I was totally and absolutely broken.
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And I remember almost immediately, I picked up a Bible, which I had never picked up honestly in my whole life.
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And when I picked up that Bible and I started to read, I could not put it down.
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It wasn't even a matter of choice.
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I could not put it down.
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And my first interaction with the Scriptures was completely lost.
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Many of the things that I was taught as a young boy, a Catholic citizen, was, as I read the Bible, was completely different than what I was taught.
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So I became angry that someone had lied to me all along.
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But what really was troubling me was that I was, for the first time in my life, empty.
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And I was lost.
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And I knew that I needed, and I'll say this, but I knew I needed someone else.
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And so as I started to read, the Scriptures became alive.
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I don't know how else to say it.
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And I'm sure that many of you would be able to say the same thing.
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But as I read that Bible, the words jumped off the pages.
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They were no longer words.
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And I can remember a 19th Christ in 1978.
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I was 24 years old.
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And I can't remember the exact date in 1978 or the exact time.
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But I know where I was.
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And I know it in my heart as clear today as I did in 1978.
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And I will say to you, this is my testimony, that I heard a voice.
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A voice I had never heard before.
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And that voice spoke two words.
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And those two words were, follow me.
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And those two words were to me like the opening up.
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And everything that went on before my life all of a sudden seemed to start to slide backwards.
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And those two words, follow me, became, if you will, the engines of life for me.
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Now, I'm not saying everyone has to hear a voice.
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Please don't misunderstand me.
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But I will tell you this.
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I did not necessarily hear a song from heaven.
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But as clear as any word could speak, those were the two words, follow me.
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And when I started to read and when I started to look at the Scriptures, as I said, I was overwhelmed.
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I was captivated by truth.
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And so my first church experience now comes into focus.
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And my first church experience was in a, still being in New York, was in a Southern Baptist church.
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You can't have one in New York, by the way.
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But it was a Southern Baptist church, and it was a, it was the first experience I ever had in a church, other than Roman Catholicism.
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And I will say to you, the first day I walked into that church, people were so friendly.
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I took my wallet from my back pocket, and I put it in my front pocket.
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Because I had never really been in a setting, in that sense, where people seemed so friendly and so desirous to help.
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I really thought they were going to try to rob me.
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That's my experience.
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But anyway, it was a Southern Baptist church.
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It was dispensational.
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It was Arminian.
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It was, and the pastor there was a very good, smart, educated, well-spoken man.
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And I had no doubt he was a God-given man.
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My first experience was a dispensational Arminian church that had a Schofield Bible in its pew.
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And I took that Schofield Bible, and if you have anything to do with the Schofield Bible, you know the notes that are in there, that teach dispensationalism and premillennialism and the rapture and all that.
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And boy, I had to hold that stuff up.
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I went out, and I bought a great flight at Earth.
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I mean, I was good to go.
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I did everything but buy a t-shirt that said the rapture is here, and the shirt will be empty.
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I mean, I, and here's the thing.
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And again, my testimony, I don't want it just to be about my wife.
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I want it to be about how God worked in my mind.
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That whole thing with Russians and the Chinese coming over the mountains and the armies and all that stuff, it seemed like sci-fi stuff.
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It really did.
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But it was so appealing because it had, it seemed to have some touch to it.
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It seemed to have some, I could relate to it.
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Let me put it that way.
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And so that really was my first experience.
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And like I said, I started getting tapes from Dallas Seminary.
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I started to, like I said, buy dispensational books.
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I bought White Pentecostal and Walgood and all the dispensationalists and all the Arminians.
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And I was good to go.
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But little by little, and it's clear, I guess, in our testimonies, friends, we need to include the providence of God and how it works, that I came into contact almost by chance, if there ever was such a thing as chance, I came into contact with a pastor in California whose name was William Downing.
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William Downing was a Calvinist.
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William Downing was a prolific preacher.
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And I had contacted him through one of my friends, and he began to send us material about the sovereignty of God.
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And when he started to send out material to me about the sovereignty of God, it was like lights went on.
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I would say this, and I would say this even to my wife, and she would agree.
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When me and Candy came to be confronted with the doctrines of grace, of God's sovereignty, it seemed absolutely natural to us.
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There was no hesitation on our part.
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Again, before that, I just didn't have any understanding of it.
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So Pastor Downing sent me some of his materials and books.
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But he sent me some messages from an old evangelist, and I'm not sure anybody would even know him by the name of Rob Barnard.
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Rob Barnard was, he was firing himself from beginning to end.
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And as I listened to him, I couldn't stop.
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And as I read the scriptures, and it was as if the world was on fire.
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And it took me out of the late great planet Earth kind of mind frame, and I became more and more interested in the doctrines of grace.
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I'm sorry, I will speak it up here.
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I became more and more interested in the doctrines of grace.
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And so what I did was, I bought Matthew and Henry Connery.
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I bought the big six volume Matthew, Henry, Connery, and I ate that thing up.
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I couldn't put it down.
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I read it through over and over and over again.
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Then I started to buy some books.
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I started to buy books by Arthur Pinck.
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I started to buy books by Martin L.
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Jones.
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And now I am, I'm on the way to becoming a reformed theologian.
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At least that's what I thought in my mind.
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So that was really my first church experience and how I came to Christ.
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Really my first experience with a local church.
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Then I moved in 1982 to a church that was members of the Sovereign Grace Baptist Association, which is an association of Baptist churches in the north that were reformed.
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If any of you have any familiarity, it had a lot to do with Al Martin and Trinity Academy, as well as Colorado Church in Pennsylvania.
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And they were reformed.
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And at that time, that association was called the Sovereign Grace Baptist Church.
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I moved to a church.
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We moved from one part of Long Island to another part of Long Island.
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I went to that church.
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Became a member there in 1982.
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In 1986, they asked me to be a deacon.
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And I certainly was thrilled to do that.
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And then in 1990, I was ordained as an elder in that church, where I served with another elder for two, maybe two, between two and three years.
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During this time now, I'm buying books.
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I mean, I'm buying and buying books.
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I can't get enough reading.
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I'm buying every reformed thing I can find.
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And my world was just great.
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Well, in 1993, I lost my dog to tinseness.
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And we had to make a decision, and the decision was to leave the dog and to come down to Florida with my parents at that time in Florida.
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And I moved my family, my grandparents.
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We had two cats, two dogs, and 400 dogs.
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And we moved from New York to Florida.
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And I came to Florida in 1993, and here's the next area of my life.
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When I came to Florida, I was surprised that all I knew, at least at that time, were Southern Baptist churches.
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I found that Roman Catholicism was the prevailing church in the north.
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And when I came to Florida, I thought, that's all there is.
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It's Southern Baptist churches.
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And they were all on me.
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And they were all dispensational.
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And so I want to say this to you because I hope you'll be able to relate to this.
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When I came to Florida from 1993 to about 2003, another decade, I went through a dry spell.
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I never went through a dry spell concerning my relationship to the north.
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I went through a dry spell because I was depressed.
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I felt like I was never going to be able to find a place where I could contribute to.
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And so for 10 years, from 1993 to 2003, I bounced from many churches.
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And as I bounced from church, I had the opportunity to preach and teach and all those things.
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But my soul was really dry.
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And I can't explain it.
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I really can't.
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I can't explain how I went from being lit up and couldn't get enough to coming down here and having to start all over again and support my grandparents.
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And I had to support them and the kids and all those things.
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Anyway, I would say for 10 years, I went through a dry spell.
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And I do believe that that was the ordained dry spell, that God had it His way, and I had to work my way through it.
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In 2003, as I come towards the end, in 2003, I had an interesting experience.
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My son was getting married to his now wife, and they were going to a church in Middleburg, O'Grove Baptist Church.
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And I've always had affiliations with Baptist churches up until recently.
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In 2003, I went there because my son was going to get married.
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I wanted to visit.
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I wanted to see what the church was like.
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So I went there.
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And I don't know what to say here for a little while.
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And one day, the pastor of that church stood up in the middle of his message and he said, I'm leaving.
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And then he went right back to his message, literally.
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He said, it's fine.
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I'm leaving.
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I'll give you a month, but I'm leaving.
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And then he went right back to the passage of his preaching.
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Well, people knew I was a minister from my son and other things.
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Anyway, in 2003, they asked me to fill in as a pastor to Lakewood Times.
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And I did fill in until 2016.
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So I filled in for 12, 13 years.
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And here's the thing.
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And I want, again, I'm trying to help us understand where my life has taken me because your life is totally different.
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But our testimonies should line up a little bit along the same line.
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It was a Southern Baptist church.
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It was Arminian.
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It was dispensational.
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And here I am, a Calvinist, an Armillennialist, and totally against dispensationalism, and they asked me to fill in.
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And you can imagine the rocks that the boat hit going through that.
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And there were about 250 people there when I first got there.
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First year I was there, we lost probably 50 to 75.
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Almost every message I preached had another family say, I don't believe that anymore.
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And I understood that because that wasn't where they came from.
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Anyway, little by little, and this is the glorious part, little by little, we began to see that as people left because of the preaching, some people came because of the preaching.
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And I found that there were Calvinists in the woods.
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Who knew that there were Calvinists in Middleburg in an orange park? But there were, and so they started to come, and so God started to add it anyway.
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That church is still a reformed church.
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They are affiliated with the founders.
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I left in 2016 because of the situation with my parents who were still alive at that time, and some circumstances that I had to take care of for my family.
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So that went into 2016, and I would say during that period, from 2004 I think I became the Elder of Pasadena.
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I have no books.
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I now have probably 1,000 books, and I'm looking to expand my house just to buy more bookshelves, just to buy more books.
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I don't have time for anything to do with that.
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They told me I had to go into the garage.
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Anyway, that brings me to finish my testimony in that I came here in 2016, and I'm not sure how, in a sense, I got here.
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And I'm not leaving, by the way.
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By the way, you're going to have to throw me out of your building so you know that.
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But I wanted to say that to you because I wanted you to think about your testimony, not just the certain circumstances that brought you to Christ, but how God took you from darkness into light.
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Was it like Paul? Were you knocked down and then got up and then all of a sudden it was there? Was it like Lydia? The Bible says she heard the gospel of the Lord over the cross.
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Or did you come through the mud? Did God have to, in that sense, drag you? I think that's an important question.
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And your understanding.
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Did you come to Christ with clear understanding, shadowy understanding? Was there guilt? Was there loss? What was it? And to see where you progress.
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Because, again, I say our testimony is not just, I can't say it.
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Our testimony is, this is what I was, this is what I believed, and this is how God began to break down the walls.
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And I'll just end it with this.
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And someone said this many, many years ago.
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It probably goes past a decade.
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He said before you bring a man to the true God, you've got to kill his God.
33:58
And that's exactly what happened to me.
34:01
My God, who I made up, slowly began to die.
34:05
And the true God, praise his name, gave more and more men to me.
34:11
And the darkness disappeared.
34:14
And I'll leave it at that.