Hello everyone,
I have just recently received membership in the forum and wanted to introduce myself. My name is Jody Edwards and I live in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I am 47 years old and have a wonderful wife named Julie. We have three boys - ages 14, 12 & 7. Julie homeschools all three of them and I work in the poultry industry.
The Lord brought my wife & me to bible-truths.com in October 2005. At that time we had been attending a pentecostal church for about a year. Before that, we had been associated with Baptist churches, Church of Christ churches and non-demoninational churches from the time we were children. Obviously, attending a pentecostal church was a big change of us back then but it is where the Lord wanted us at that time. Mercifully though, the Lord pulled us out after only one year.
My testimony: Back in Oct. 2005 I was reading Foxnews online about an earthquake in Pakistan. The article showed a picture of a little 12 year old boy who had lost his parents in the quake and was now homeless. My heart really went out to the boy, not just because of his losses but because I knew he was a Muslim and was most likely not ever going to "be saved". Of course back then, I believed in hell and I believed that this boy's miserable life was only going to get worse when he died. That night as I prayed, my thoughts of this boy came back into my mind and I grieved for him. I just couldn't understand why I had been given so much in this life but this poor boy had been given nothing. His future seemed so bleak to me and I knew that he was going to end up in the fires of hell. I just couldn't understand the fairness in all this and it brought me to tears. I asked the Lord to explain this to me and give me an answer. Three days later, I had put this out of my mind and was going about business as usual - but the Lord had not forgotten. That day I had extra time at work and I decided to find something to read on the internet. Back then, I was big into endtime prophecy and liked to read all I could find on that subject. I went to Google and performed a search and a list of websites came up. The first one that looked interesting to me was bible-truths.com so I clicked on it. After reading a little bit I thought this site was pretty far "out there" but I kept on reading because Ray Smith's arguments and scriptures seemed to make sense. After I got home from work, I brought the site back up and read all evening - I just couldn't believe what I was reading but I couldn't stop reading either. The next morning I prayed to the Lord that if what Ray was teaching was true, that He would open my eyes to it so that I can believe it. I went back to reading again and I was on the Lake of Fire part 4 when an overwhelming sense of relief and joy came over me. I knew right then that the Lord gave me the belief I had asked for an hour earlier. And then immediately after that, my prayer three days earlier for the Muslim boy came back to my mind and I knew that this was the Lord's answer for that boy. The joy I felt at that moment was incredible. I called out to my wife and explained to her what I had just been shown and within 30 minutes we both were praising the Lord for the truth he had just shown us.
Within two weeks, we left the babylonian church system for good after our pentecostal church rejected what we had been shown. None of our friends there could believe a single word we were saying to them. To my wife and I, the truths the Lord had shown us were marvellous, but to them those same truths were lies from Satan. Since that time (almost 3 years now), none of our friends or family can accept these wonderful truths either.
I could say much more but I will leave that to another time. I thank the Lord for the work He is doing through Ray and all those who are a part of bible-truths.com.
I am planning on attending the Nashville conference next month and I hope to make many new friends there, in addition to the new friends I hope to make on this forum.
May the Lord continue to bless you all,
Jody