"From Bondage and Darkness to Liberty and Light" by Micah Hozen

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back here to Strength to Strength. What a blessing to be together again, and just a good time of visiting to be here beforehand.

Brothers here from all parts of the world, and but that shouldn't surprise us. With God's kingdom, we have this familial spirit, with Jesus as our King and as our elder brother, and God as our Father. This familial spirit that ties us together all around the world, and what a blessing to be here, to be part of this kingdom.

So this is our last talk for 2022. We sit here at the sunset of a year, anticipating a new year. I think this is the 34th talk for this year, and it's been a really good year here on Strength to Strength. We're very thankful for that.

We've seen many friendships get started here, and many interactions. And here at Strength to Strength, we often get emails that come in with questions, and it's been a very, very good year. We want to thank our Heavenly Father for that. A quote that I thought of this morning as I was thinking about here at the sunset of 2022, I thought of the quote by C.T. Studd: "Only one life will soon be passed," or maybe we could say, "only one year."

And then he continues, "But only what's done for Christ will last." And so isn't that the case? We know that deeply that those things that are done for God, those important things, things of the kingdom, some of those are very mundane and small, but those will last.

So that can be reassuring to us as we face the future, uncertain as it might be. We can face it with certainty and even with anticipation to see what God is going to do in this coming year. And we're so excited to have our brother Micah on this morning, the whole way from out in the Pacific Northwest. So welcome here this morning with us, Micah. I got to meet Micah maybe in June of this year. I think you and your family were through. They had spent a year at Sattler College in Boston, and they were on the way back to the West Coast and stopped by, and it was a real blessing to meet you here this past year.

His topic this morning is From Bondage and Darkness to Liberty and Light. And really looking forward to hearing your testimony, Micah. I've gotten to hear a little bit of that, but to hear that here again, and also to hear what you're anticipating for the future. So it's always a blessing to look back and to look forward, and even to talk about the present as well. So we're anticipating that. So thank you, Micah, for joining us the whole way from out in Oregon. So Micah is from the Pacific Time Zone.

And I think this is actually the first time we've had somebody from that part of the world join us. So thank you for being so brave. I don't know if we ever asked anybody. If we have, we got no's because, like I said, they've never joined before, but it's good to have you here. So Micah was up at 2:30, 2 o'clock in the morning out there. So what a blessing to have you here and to join us. I was curious, Micah, are you going to be up this early and then also see the new year in too tonight?

I'm not sure. I'm not sure what we're doing today. I think that would be called burning the candle at both ends. Yeah, and in the middle too.

With nine children in the house, you might not get a good nap in. I don't know. Anyhow, so good to have you here. Before we get started, let's just bow our heads and ask our Heavenly Father to be with us here.

Father, thank you for this privilege of gathering with these brothers from all parts of the world, all parts of your kingdom. Lord, we're so humbled to, as we look back over the past year, and I'm sure as Micah looks back over his life, we see your hand at work, and we want to thank you. Lord, we want to be those who come back and say thank you. You have grateful hearts. Even though there's been hard things, there's also been so many good things, so many blessings.

And Father, we ask, Lord, that you would guide Micah and just give him wisdom, a clear mind, a calm heart as he shares, Lord, and that he would do it for your glory, which I'm certain that is his heart, and help him just to just trust in you in this time as he tells his life story. And he also has dreams about the future, Father.

You've given us the ability to imagine and to create. And so, Father, we ask, Lord, that you would just bless the desires of the Hosien family, the Brackett family, as they consider Portland and the need for a kingdom church in that city.

So Father, God indirect them. God indirect him. As he shares this morning, and we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. All right, Micah, we'll turn it over to you, and God bless you, brother, as you share. You can introduce yourself in whatever way you would like, and then close when you would like, and we'll open it up for some Q&A then as well. So all yours. All right. Thank you, brother. And I want to say I appreciate the videos.

It's hard for me to talk into space and into nothing. So if any of the rest of you want to pop on your videos, I'd appreciate it. Even if you're in your PJs, that'd be okay.

So my name is Micah Hosien. I'm from Oregon, originally from California, Southern California.

I'm going to share a little bit of my story. But I want to start when I was 19 years old. I was raised in a church-going home. So at 19 years old, I was at Pismo Beach, which is about the Central Coast of California.

And I found myself buried alive four feet deep under the sands of Pismo Beach, breathing through a half-inch piece of metal conduit with four guys, including my older brother, up above trying to dig me out and save my life.

I knew about God, and I knew about Christ, and I was not ready to die. The first thing was, "God, I'm not ready to die."

I was raised to kind of that I need to confess my sins before we die. And so I was doing that, and I was just all along. I had no peace. I heard the shovels above me as they were trying to dig me out, and I knew I was lost.

We had dug a fire pit and dug some holes in the sand, just kind of messing around, and ended up being a tunnel. My brother dug one side. I had dug the other side. When I was 19 years old, he was in his mid-20s. I was out there with him and his wife and some of our friends. And we dug a tunnel, and somebody threw some fireworks in there, and then a buddy said, "Hey, I bet you can't make it through there." And I said, "Oh, sure I can." So I dove in headfirst, and it was four feet down, and there was a pile of sand on top of it. And so I dove in and scrambled up and came out the other side.

I thought, "Wow, that was exciting." And we were laughing a little bit. And I can't remember why, but I went in a second time, and I dove in the hole. And this was sand, beach sand, mind you. And as I was coming up to go up the other end of the tunnel, my back brushed the bit of sand, and it collapsed on me. And my head was about four feet from the surface, and the tunnel was still there. And my brother dove into the tunnel and tried to grab me, and I was buried from my shoulders to my knees. And so he couldn't pull me out. Another friend was going to tie a rope to my boots and hook it to the hitch of his truck and try to pull me out that way.

I'm glad he didn't do that.

And then the first thing I thought of as I saw the sand kind of coming in around me, as I said, "I need something to breathe out of." My brother had made a—he used this little metal pipe to make a windbreak. I said, "I need a piece of pipe. Give me a piece of conduit." "Jeremy," my brother said, "conduit." Nathan grabbed the piece of pipe, knocked it against his boot to get the sand out of it, gave it to Jeremy. He threw it in the hole. I had my hand right here. I was able to grab the conduit, and I kept it by my mouth. They grabbed shovels, started digging, and it caved the rest of the sand in.

So it was totally black. And I had my hand and a little bit of air around here, and I was breathing through this pipe. And it took a while. I think it was a half hour. It seemed like eternity.

And I could hear them above saying, "Micah, we're getting tired," as they were digging and digging and digging.

And all along, I was crying out to God, "God, I'm not ready to die. I'm not ready to die." They finally dug down a deep enough channel that I could see some light. It was nighttime, but I could see the lights around. But it was so steep, they moved around, and it caved it in again.

I screamed out.

They ended up digging me out that day, and I came out onto the sand, and we were raised to memorize prayers. And so I'd get on my knees, and I said every memorized prayer that I knew. And I got up, and I hugged each of the guys that dug me out. And one of them said, "Micah, I thought we were going to dig your grave today."

And that night, I got into my truck, and I drove four hours to another city where I was going that weekend. And I was just thinking, thinking, thinking. So that was 19 years old. I want to zoom back to my childhood. And I have a scripture for each section of my life. So my childhood, the scripture is 2 Timothy 3:15, that from a child, thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise into salvation.

I was raised in the city, in the Southern California suburbs, in Whittier, California, born and raised. I was two years old, and then I got married in the same house. So I knew one house growing up. Went to public school. I loved God's things. I loved the things about God. I loved singing.

We were from a singing background in our family and our church. And so I loved singing. I was drawn to zeal and people who were zealous. My older brother had made a vow. So amongst the group we were raised in, a lot of the youth have drinking parties.

And my brother had made a vow as a young teenager not to drink. And I remember with some other friends, and he told me about it. And that inspired me. And I thought, "I want to do that too."

I liked serving at church. And so the youth can serve food and get involved in that way. And so I would always get involved and kind of get underfoot. But I'd like to help.

My father had a zeal, and he sang and he worshiped God, and I just loved it. I loved it. He was, where a lot of other men would maybe be kind of stalwart and staunch, he was more zealous.

He had told stories of being a conscientious objector during Vietnam, had to stood before a big row of judges with their cigars, and he had to explain to them why he wasn't going to go to war. My parents loved each other, and I knew it.

My mom said I was a sweet boy, but I was also a liar, and I was an angry boy. I would burst out in anger toward my siblings, and at school, I'd get in fights. And I was raised in a Russian Molokon home. I'm going to briefly explain what that might be because it doesn't have a really box to fit anything.

So in the 16th, 1700s, the Molokons had pulled away from the Russian Orthodox Church, got rid of the icons, and they were very evangelistic, very simplistic in their faith. If any of you have read, Peter Hoover wrote a book called The Russian Secret, and he talked about the remnant church in Russia for a thousand years. And so he mentions the spirit Christians and then the Molokons who came out of that group.

They were a group that was big on holiness and non-conformity. They didn't go to war. They didn't get involved in government. It was a pretty diverse movement in the beginning.

I would have called it an Eastern Kingdom Church, Kingdom Christians in Russia, all except they didn't do water baptism. That was the only thing or the main difference. And then in the 1830s, there was some kind of outward manifestation.

And again, I don't know everything that happened back then, just the stories. And so there was this manifestation of the Holy Spirit, and there was a split between the Molokons, and there were the Molokon jumpers who were the ones that received this outward manifestation of prophecy and tongues, and they would jump while they would worship. And then the bulk of the Molokons in Russia stayed the constant Molokons or the steadfast. They call them pasteyane.

And in the 1850s, a prophetic leader—there was a lot of prophetic leaders—arose, but one specifically named Maksim Gavrilovich Rudametkin. And he made claims about himself that he was the king of spirits, that he was the manifestation of the spirit of truth, that he was the third face of God, all things that I don't believe are true, but became kind of a cult leader amongst the jumper Molokons. And he ended up getting taken to a monastery prison, and he wrote to his followers.

And they ended up, some of his followers, smuggling his writings out on tea leaves. Kind of a fascinating story. But he died in monastery prison. He was in Solovetsky and then Suzdal.

His followers believed he was taken up. There's some stories, some legends about when they went to the prison to see him. So in 1905, a bunch of the Molokons migrated to Southern California, and they were actually looking for—they actually wanted to live. And it was a mixed group. So it wasn't all the followers of Maksim that came to the US, but it was some that did and some that didn't. They were looking actually for land in Canada or Mexico. They wanted to have a commune type of setup. But some men, a group of them, ended up in Southern California, got jobs, earned money. People heard about it, and so there was a pretty big exodus.

About 10,000 people came over in Southern California.

The followers of Maksim, the jumper Molokons, became preeminent in the American church by the 1950s. They printed his writings in a second book. So the jumper Molokons have the Bible, and then they have this other book of writings, which contains prophecies and teachings.

And it's a book that a lot of Molokons just take as a history book, but it's actually full of some pretty serious heresies. And there's a couple of men that wrote in there. And it's confusing at best and pretty dark at worst. So that was my—and so in growing up, 100 years later, so that was 1905, they came over. So in the '80s and in LA, I was raised that we were the chosen God's chosen people and kind of a one true church. We were the only chosen people. And all the rest of them, there's like 666 false Christian faiths. These are some of the things that we were raised with. I didn't have friends outside of the church.

Our social circles and our religiously, we were very isolated. So I never went to another outside church. One time, I went to a school field trip to a Catholic church. I remember being kind of scared going in there.

We wouldn't listen to any outside teachings. That was very frowned upon. And the Russian language was pretty prolific. Different churches did it different ways, but all the singing and all the praying and there was prophesying too, all that was all in the Russian language.

Some churches allowed English preaching, but the majority of people didn't have a working knowledge of Russian. A lot didn't understand it at all.

And let's see, socially and religiously isolated, but we weren't separate from the world. So we would go to, in our behavior and our lifestyle, public school, entertainment, TV, movies, music. A lot of the youth, like I said, drink and smoke, even drugs.

The youth scene has a lot of recreational dating, immodest, beach lifestyle, all those things. So that was my childhood. And then growing into the teen years, the scripture that would identify my teen years, early teen years especially, was Galatians 1:14, that I was more exceedingly zealous of the tradition of my fathers.

I loved God's things. I guess that's the best way I could say it. And a lot of Molokon youth get into smoking cigarettes, and I tried not to. When I was 15 years old, for one year, I smoked cigarettes and then just changed my mind about that. I didn't get involved in the drinking scene. I lost friends because of that.

I didn't have any real use for my Bible. I didn't do Bible reading or anything.

And I was 15. I discovered masturbation and pornography. And so 15, the next couple of years, the internet came into our world, and that just got exacerbated.

The Molokon youth, I said they have drinking parties, and I didn't really go to those, but sometimes I would because my friends, as I got older, some of my friends got drawn to that. And I had a zeal to try to help my friends to not get into that scene. So I would go to the parties, and I would steal their beer, and I would throw it in the trash to try to get them to not do that.

It didn't help. And it gave me a sense of that I was doing something right, but also that I had this lust sin that I was nurturing. And we would get involved. Me and the good kids would get involved in destruction of people's property. We'd drive around at night and smash things and try not to get caught.

And so there was this mixture of desire to do right, but also sin. I would also host get-togethers at our house. So it wasn't a party. It was a get-together. My parents allowed us to have 100, 200 people over our house. And so our house was kind of the clean house where we would just host all these youth and where most of the parents would not go outside. My father would come outside and give a big speech to all the young people and say, "Hey, you're all welcome to be here.

You're not allowed to drink here. No drinking, no smoking. If you want to do that, go somewhere else." But he would walk around, and he'd go out. And at night, there'd be kind of a get-together and a big group of young people, and he would go out there and surprise all the other parents. He'd say, "Well, you're going outside." He's like, "Yeah, sure." And so that impacted me that he was willing to get involved.

And during those teen years, my father began a question and answer, like a topical Bible study. And I remember sitting in on that with my older siblings. And it was kind of the first time I really noticed the Bible. And it was mostly like he would do a very topical. They'd ask questions about suicide and abortion and just these different teen questions. And he would just dig in and answer those questions. I noticed at that time my family was more into Maksim, this false prophet.

My family was more into him than most Molokons, especially my mother's side of the family. And I became more exceedingly zealous of the tradition of my fathers. And I wanted to learn more about Maksim. And because those who were the Maksimists, those who were that portion of the Molokons seemed to be more fervent.

And those who would talk about Jesus just kind of seemed to be lax. And I noticed that. So moving on, I was 18 years old. And so my older teen years would be 1 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for instruction, of correction, for instruction and righteousness." I started attending a couple of exegetical Bible studies taught by older Molokon men where they would just teach through the Bible. And that was eye-opening to me. And so before this time, I remember I was a mid-teen. My uncle had bought me a King James Bible. So I remember sitting at my desk one time. I think I was 15 years old.

And I sat at my desk. I was like, "I'm going to read my Bible. I want to do this." And I remember sitting down and just I remember just my head swirling, and there was words, and I couldn't really grasp it. And so that was my history with the Bible. But going to these Bible studies, I was taught I think I was taught a lot of truth. And so these are both men who weren't really into the book of Spirit and Life. That's the Molokon's book. It's called the book of Spirit and Life or the book of the Son. And so these two Bible teachers were more biblical-based. And so I started learning scriptures.

And I remember hearing and I remember the gospel hitting me. I was 18 years old. I was at this man, Jim Metchikov's house. He was teaching the Bible studies. He's an elder man. And I remember hearing like, "Oh, you believe on Jesus and you're saved."

And I was 18. I remember exactly where I was sitting at his house. And it was like the lights went on. But nothing changed. But I remember understanding it. During that time, I heard of this guy who was a little older than me named Johnny Lodiyev.

Something interesting happened that he had left the Molokons. But I remember hearing that he had gotten married. And the peculiar thing about his marriage was—and my aunt was telling me this story kind of derisively—and that at their wedding, Johnny and his wife were going to kiss for the first time. And I remember something went off in my head thinking, "Hey, there's something good about that." And we had a little debate. My aunt was my older brother's age. And so we had a little discussion about whether that was a good idea or not. And I thought it was a good idea. Again, I'm thinking about these zealous things.

Also, through one of these Bible teachers, I was introduced to some outside teaching. And it was actually Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis Ministry and also Michael Pearl. And so I got a book and was opened up to some outside Bible teaching. And so from Ken Ham, I learned that I could just believe the Bible. And that was life-changing for me. And Michael Pearl, through him, it was an idea of a godly family. There's the last chapter of his book to his two children.

It was a child training book. And I'm 18 years old. And so if you asked me at 18, I knew everything about child training. You should have just asked my friends who had children. I shake my head about the things that I said now, but I had it pinned down.

But it gave me a vision for a godly family and a holy life. I worked at a computer doing drafting. And so I would listen to—I found this sermon audio and sermon index. So I listened to Revival Preaching and Charles Spurgeon and Ian Paisley and Leonard Ravenhill. And so I listened to a lot. I can't remember a lot of the other names, but it was Bible teaching. And during that time, I started debating other people about the Trinity. There were some Molokon chat rooms and stuff. And ex-Molokons would debate. And I started debating because Molokons don't believe in Trinity.

And through trying to debate it, I ended up seeing it in the scriptures, seeing the divinity of Christ. And so during that time, as I was growing fervency and learning about the Bible, I loved Molokon culture and traditions. And so Molokons, when they go to church, they wear this kind of peasant-style clothing. The women's dress is real modest, and they cover their heads. And the men wear this kind of tunic shirt and a little rope belt, like 100 years ago, peasant Russians would.

But as soon as they leave, they get all changed, and they blend right back in with the world. But I tried to make Molokon culture and traditions fit with the Bible. And I was just trying to make these things go together. I was hearing good Bible teaching, and I was trying to make them all go together.

But I had no prayer life, no personal Bible reading. I had no victory over sin. So pornography and masturbation was gaining ground in my life. And I was zealous for Jesus, and I was zealous for Maksim, this false prophet. And I tried to make them fit together. And Maksim even wrote a couple of prayers to Jesus. And they were real beautiful. And so it was just this confusing mixture of things in my mind.

And so all American Molokons don't accept Maksim as the King of Spirits and that he's going to rule under Christ in the thousand-year reign and all this stuff. But in order to be an American Molokon church, they all need to kind of tip their hat to him. So there's even churches that almost don't accept him at all, but they still have his book open on their main altar table in the church. And so they all have to do that because if they take it off, then the church kind of gets cut off from the rest of the churches.

And so at 23 years old, the next scripture in my early 20s is 1 Peter 1:16, "Be ye holy." And so the idea of holiness was coming to bear in my mind.

I met and married my beautiful wife, Monya, which is Russian for Mary. We were both into God, and we were both interested in getting married, which was fairly unique at that time in our age group. She's a few years younger than I am.

And when I was 17, I asked God. So my prayer life existed. My prayer life was basically when I wanted things. And so at 17, I asked God, "I want a wife." I was ready to get married at 17.

So at 23, I got married. I thought I was ready at 17. And so I finally had a wife of my own. And we both tried. We both tried to. We had some good marriage counseling, and we both tried to make it work. And there were some sweet things about our early marriage, but I brought sin into our marriage.

And neither one of us was born again. And I desired holiness. I desired victory over sin. I hated my sin, but I didn't really hate my sin. It's hard to pin it all down. Did I not quite understand? I kept going to it, and I kept lying about it.

But we wanted a different kind of life. So we grew up with a TV. My wife's family got a TV in her early teens, and she saw the shift in her family. And we both decided we're not going to have a TV when we get married.

And so we didn't. Now, we would watch worldly movies and stuff on computers and go to my parents' house and watch TV. But we tried to make these particular lines in our life. And so about a year after marriage, we decided to leave the city. There's a Molokon community up in kind of around the Silverton-Woodburn area, nearby Salem, Oregon.

And I loved Oregon. I had visited there a few times, visited the Molokon group up there, and never thought about moving. And then one day, we talked about it. And my parents said, "We're thinking about moving to Oregon." My wife and I went up there one weekend to consider moving up there. And when we left Oregon, we had an offer in on a house.

So we got out of the city. My mindset was, "I'm going to flee Sodom and Gomorrah before it," or, "I'm going to flee Sodom and Gomorrah before the fire falls from heaven." I wanted to raise a family, and I didn't want to do it in the city. And I thought that was the answer.

So we got chickens and goats and ducks and lived on Silver Creek. It was a beautiful little property on the edge of Silverton. And we still had sin. I still had sin. Our marriage wasn't doing well. At some point, my wife discovered my sin and considered leaving at one point. But the divorce levels historically in the Molokon have been very, very low, even at that time. So it was almost 20 years ago.

And during that time, I was again listening to teaching and listening to preaching.

Leonard Ravenhill and holiness and prayer and those things were starting to take root more and stir me up. The scripture for this next season, in early days of Oregon, was Romans 6:11, "Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God."

And it was actually through—I don't recommend everything Michael Pearl teaches, but I listened to his teachings on Romans 6:7 and 8 for two years, over and over and over and over, sitting at a computer, drawing blueprints. And I believed what the scripture said, that we could be dead to sin and alive to God, that we could have victory. We could have victory over sin. And for two years, I believed that by faith, that believing that I could be dead to sin. And it didn't work. It wouldn't work, and I couldn't figure out why.

And

I was learning the Bible through, again, outside teaching. I was teaching a Bible study. And the next scripture at 28 years old is 2 Corinthians 13:15, "Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith."

And it was through, again, it was just confusing. I would watch street preachers and be excited about those kinds of things. And I would look at pornography. And so my whole life was just a big jumble. And it was some preaching, again, by online stuff, but through Paul Washer. And he just had these scathing messages. And I just knew there was something about it. I knew there was something that needed to change.

And so it was through a message on that scripture, "Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith." So I got away, and I spent some time fasting. Actually, I don't think I got away. I think I was just—I was around the house. I was spending some time fasting and praying.

And I actually still have the notebook right down here. And I wrote some things on this notebook. And it was, "In 100 years, will I be in heaven or hell?" And basically, this is examining my life. And I look back at kind of the—so I was 28. I look back at the 10 years from when I understood the gospel at 18. And there was no victory over sin.

I didn't love God's word. I didn't have a prayer life. At least I didn't have answered prayer. Let's say that. At 28 years old, we had two children by this point. And no, three. Nathaniel was born too.

And so I was reflecting on all of that. I didn't have victory over sin. And I knew that God would chasten his children. And so I was walking in sin, unrepentant sin for those years, and I wasn't being chastened by God. And that was a key thing for me. It hit me. And I thought, "Whoa."

I'm trying to think if there's anything else. But those things were so impactful to me that I realized I'm lost. And I actually said it with my mouth, like, "I'm lost. I'm a sinner."

And I didn't know what to do because I had come to understand the gospel. I had come to understand the truth. I had come to understand holiness and all these things. And I thought, "What do I do? How do I lay hold of this?"

And I ended up telling my wife. And there was a time when—and she was perplexed about it. She was trying to figure out what was going on, who this man was that she was living with. And I remember at one point, we were sitting in our living room in Silverton, and she just opened her mouth, and just out of her mouth just came this—I can't remember exactly what she said, but it was just the pure unadulterated gospel.

And it was like I was sitting there on this bench, and it was like I was in this muddy water, and I couldn't quite grab things. And as she was speaking, it was like it was this breath of life.

And in my heart, I'm thinking, "Keep going. Keep going. This is good. This is good." And then she stopped. And inside, I was going, "No. Don't stop. Keep going. This is good." And she stopped, and it was kind of like I sunk back in and got confused again. And I think Satan lied to both of us that day.

She thought, "Well, I can't teach my husband." And I thought, "Well, I can't let my wife teach me." Well, at least learn that. But I think the gospel is one beggar telling another beggar where to find some food in a simple way.

And then a couple of days later, I was teaching a Bible study, and I thought, "Well, God spoke through a donkey. Maybe he could speak through me." And I kept the Bible study going. But only my wife and one friend came. His name is John.

And he's the most soft-spoken, quiet man that I know and still have ever known. So I was going to teach on Genesis 3 and 4 about the fall, interestingly. So I set it aside, and I told John what was going on. I said, "John, I'm lost. I went through this." And I explained to him everything.

He just kind of sits there. He opens his Bible.

Doesn't say anything. He said, "Turn to Psalm such and such." I can't remember where. And we turned there, and we read it. And he said, "Is that you?" And we spent the next four hours till about 1:00 in the morning looking at scriptures and talking and praying and crying out to God. And at some point, I heard him just lift his voice louder than I'd ever hear him. And he cried out to God for me. And something changed that night. I confessed, and I repented, and I believed with all my heart.

I didn't gain any more information, but something went from here to here. And so it was this experience. And I learned enough about experiential Christianity that I wasn't looking for an experience. And I got an experience. And we're singing the song in Russian, "Oh, give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His mercy endures forever." And I'm raising my hands, and I just feel this burden lifted. I'm like, "Praise the Lord." And I look at John, and he just looks green. He's just exhausted. I look at my wife, and she's just like this. And I just thought, "What's wrong with you guys? Aren't you happy? Don't you know what God did for us?"

Well, they just fought a battle for my soul, and I'm reaping the benefits from it. And everything changed. From that day, everything changed. My life—so this next scripture is 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creature. He's a new creation. All things are passed away; behold, all things have become new."

My life was as different as death and life, darkness, light, bondage to liberty.

Within a month, my wife actually had a similar but very distinct experience of her own because she had not walked in, according to her conscience, as a teenage life. That's her story. But she had something too where she got clear with God.

And I sinned three more times with lust after that. It was about a month or two.

And my conscience was totally different. And my heart was broken. And God delivered me from that, from pornography and masturbation that year. And our marriage was different, and our relationship was different. And how we looked at what life was was different. Everything tasted and smelled and felt new. Molokons don't believe in water baptism. And so a year later, we happened to visit the church in Cane Creek.

And it was actually Michael Pearl who baptized me. And then I got to baptize my wife at the same time.

Other Molokon friends who at that same season were seeking, and some people were trying to argue with me and say, "Oh, you didn't get saved. You always were. You just kind of woke up or something." I said, "No, I was lost." "Oh, no, no, Michael. We know you, Michael. You just—" "No," I said, "I was lost, and now I'm found."

And some had some similar experiences. Actually, my two brother-in-laws, my sister's husbands, who are both a little older than me, had similar experiences. And we didn't find out till a year or two later. It was kind of like a secret revival amongst a lot of Molokons.

So we spent a year seeking with these people, with these other Molokons. And I remember even before I got baptized, we were even talking about baptism, like, "Well, you haven't been baptized, and I haven't. Can we go out to the river and baptize each other?" It was interesting. I'd never really known about the Anabaptists and kind of how they did that.

But we were trying to figure out what to do. And after a year of seeking, we ended up hearing about this Christian homeschool conference in Oregon. So we went there. And I didn't know what to expect. I had listened to enough holiness preaching that I was worried about going to non-American churches. And I found a really sweet remnant of people up in Portland at this homeschool conference talking about, "It's not about homeschooling. It's about family discipleship." And there was this really peculiar-looking group of people handing out free CDs and books. I was pretty suspicious. They were all smiling. And I was looking at these books by this guy named David Burkott. And I was like, "I don't know who this guy is."

And these Godly Home series by this guy named Denny. And I was like, "Yeah, I'll take a few of these." And I put them in a bag. And I went home, and I searched David Burkott, David Burso. And somebody said something bad about him. And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that guy's probably crazy."

But we met this group, and I think we went to their church. It was a charity church in Halsey, Oregon, Valley Christian Fellowship, where Brother Roger Hertzler is. And we went to this church and met some people, some people who were Anabaptist background, some people who were non-Anabaptist background, Kingdom Christian seeking. And it was really exciting. During that year, we went back east and met some ex-Molokons who were Mennonites.

And they were in Tennessee. And we met them in Kentucky, Jim and Tonya Volkoff. And then we met the Pearls. And it was just a really special year. We did some travel. We went to the Creation Museum. And it was just this newness of life. We learned about Kingdom Christians. And at that point, started settling into those convictions more and more. As I explored outside the Molokon fold, my seeking friends, seeking Molokon friends, most of them leaned back toward Molokonism. And a lot of them, we've parted ways. And it's been some difficult relationships. And we've tried to reach out in different ways to a number of them. And with a lot of them, it's pretty difficult.

The ones who are the most seeking seem to have drawn back from us, at least. And so the next and maybe the last season, I don't know, the next scripture, 2 Corinthians 6:17, "Come out from among them and be separate. Touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you," saith the Lord.

So after two years of seeking, we ended up telling our parents and our preacher that we were going to leave the Molokons and had some pretty decent conversations with a couple of them. My parents was a more difficult conversation.

And we left everything. So that was our family, our cousins, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents. Ended up bringing shame to our parents because in the Molokons, people that leave are treated kind of like Samaritan dogs, those mninach. The word mninach is kind of this vernacular that we grew up with. It means not ours. And so anybody outside the Molokons was mninach.

When I grew up, you didn't drink out of the same cup as a mninach. We had some workers that were working at a house when I was a little guy, and they had their special cups and dishes that we would give them food.

My younger brother accidentally drank out of a mninach person's cup when he was a little guy. And he felt sick and didn't know what to do. And so this was the attitude of those on the outside. So we became those to our family. We became the ones that rejected the faith. We left the faith, is how they called it.

And even the way that Molokons do church is different from the typical American sitting in pews, everybody facing one direction. Molokons have church kind of in a circle. And there's more interaction and stuff like that. So we left, and we went to we started visiting Valley Christian Fellowship. It's a charity church in Halsey, Oregon.

And we attended there for and we ended up moving down there, attended there for about two years. And it was a sweet season of life. And I was seeking a people. I was seeking a people because I left my people, and I was looking for that.

So there was a lot of really good things we got from down there, just settling in and understanding what a Kingdom Christian was and seeing that in my distant past.

But certain things there, the Anabaptist cultural things that were involved with the church, they perplexed us. I was very much into modest dress and head covering.

But legislating certain styles was it was difficult to wrap my head around. And you could have printed dresses, but you can't have print on your head covering. And so we more struggled, my wife and I struggled with requiring that of someone else because I wanted to be somewhere where I could bring in people from the outside. And I also wanted an older brother to just be discipled by. And most of the people there at Valley were similar ages. People a few years older than me, but most of us were similar age. And so after a couple of years there, we ended up moving on. We were able to leave on good terms. I blessed them.

We thanked them for their time there. And we still have some good relationships there. And during that time, looking back, there was some stubbornness and pride in my own heart too. And that, hopefully, the Lord has dealt with. And we moved down to Southern Oregon. There was a home church there, a very outside-the-box home church. This older brother who had 10 children who loved the Lord and who were following their father. And this brother, James, I'd say he was Brother Ernest Eby has this chart of different groups and how they this is like a green and black chart. If you haven't looked at it, it's fascinating. But it's like Kingdom Christians and then people who are kind of halfway grasping the kingdom.

I'd say that's what this group was. Brother James, he believed in the head covering and modesty. He wasn't going to send disciples to war because it was a wrong army, but he would allow people to be in the military. And so the group was a little perplexing. But he had a heart to disciple young men. And he was, in some ways, like a spiritual father to me. And it was really special to move down there. And my plan was to be down there for five years and then move on to some other place where I can serve the Lord. And after nine months of us moving down there, he died.