I was born July 12, 1955, at Anna, Illinois, and grew up, spending time in Southern Illinois, and in Festus Missouri, where I attended high school. During the summers, I worked on my uncle’s farm at Karnak, Illinois.

From when I was 18 to 23 years old, I drove a truck, and I was a part time police officer. From 23 to 38 years old, I worked at a Zink Electrolytic Mill. During those 15 years, I also coached football. Then in 1987, I started my Insurance career, part time, while I still worked at the Zink Mill. In 1992, I ruptured a disc in my back between L4 and L5 vertebrae and needed to have surgery to relieve the pressure on my spinal cord. After that I was unable to return to the Zink Mill, so I became a full time Insurance Agent.

I was churched as Methodist, then as a Baptist. I was baptized when I was 12, and went through life believing I was saved. Thinking I had fulfilled my obligations to God. I was taught that all I had to do was believe in my heart that Jesus is the savior, profess with my mouth, and walk down front and ask to join the church and be baptized. That was it. I had arrived, I was saved, I was a Christian!

During the next 31 years I joined and left several Baptist Churches: I couldn’t find where I needed to be. What was preached didn’t line up with what I read in God’s Word. I recall asking Dr. R.W. Shields-his doctorate in Theology-Pastor of the Frist Baptist Church of East Carondelet, about Hebrews chapter 4 and the possibility we were worshiping on the wrong day. (I was then the head of the Youth Ministry for the First Baptist Church of East Carondelet IL.) I asked Dr. Shields many other questions, mainly about the book of Hebrews. He answered me by stating that the book of Hebrews wasn’t for me; it was for the Hebrews, or the Jews!

Between what was being preached and what I read in the Bible, a problem existed. The two just didn’t line up. But I thought that someone with a Doctorate of  Theology from Baylor University had to have a better understanding of Scripture than I did!

For years, and after reading the Bible several times, I just couldn’t accept  what they were trying to teach me. I just couldn’t accept, what just didn’t make sense.

In January 1999, the insurance company I was working for, asked me to take a management position in Marion Illinois. I accepted the position. My wife Patty and I moved from Randolph County to Williamson County, approximately 150 miles away. We  moved into a one room apartment in February 1999.

The following month Patty and I started to look for a church home. But nothing felt right. About a month latter a beautiful flyer came in the mail announcing a Y2K/Prophesy Crusade seminar. When I read this flyer, I felt strangely drawn to attend, but I didn’t mention it to Patty. Several days latter I brought up going to the seminar and discovered she felt exactly the same way!

The seminar started about the middle of April. The first night the Evangelist  Mike Sade, spoke about Y2K; he addressed some fears about the up coming change of the Millennium. It was predicted that computers would stop working, and the economy would fail. Then he assured us this would not happen and it didn’t.

The next night is when everything started to make sense: The evangelist held up the Bible and stated that we didn’t need any other book but the Bible! He referred to it as Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. Then he went to Hebrews chapter 8 verse 10, where the New Covenant is described: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the House of  Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put My Laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts; And I will be to them a God they shall be to Me a people.” And he explained that the Law of God was not done away with.

Finally, I could make sense of the great commandment (Matthew 22:36-40), where Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it. Thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” These two great commandments are summation of the Ten commandments. Hebrews 8:10 is the circumcision of the heart!

Evangelist Mike Sade went to Romans 2:29, and then to Hebrews chapter 4. He also laid out the calendar, showing how, the rotation of the days of the week have never changed since the creation of the Earth. The only thing that has changed is the number of days in a year, which affected the number of days in the month. But no one has ever changed the rotation of the weekly cycle. Mike Sade also showed us how the Catholic Church has claimed the authority to change the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday!

I couldn’t believe how I had been lied to! I couldn’t believe how I had accepted a lie my entire life!

Then towards the end of the seminar the evangelist started handing out books by Ellen G. White and quoting her and saying, Now that’s God speaking. They were selling, but I wasn’t buying. I’d had enough false teaching!

I had been lied to about Sunday worship and that the Law of God had been nailed to the cross, I now knew at lest part of the truth! My life was totally changed. But I now had a big problem: I felt like a man without a country. I knew I was not an Adventist, but I didn’t know of any other Sabbath keeping Churches. So Patty and decided we would keep the Sabbath at home.

About the middle of June 1999 Patty and I were out visiting some of our insurance customers in rural Pope County just east of Stonefort Illinois, when I decided to follow my nose home. We were on a back road and just followed the road. We were out in the middle of the Shawnee National Forest, It was so dark by this time you could hardly see your hand in front of your face! And then we came to U.S. Hwy 45 on Old Town Road, we stopped at the stop sign and looked at our map. We were out in the open and the moon shined brightly on a sign, that I saw out of the corner of my eye. It said Sabbath school! I jumped  out of the car and ran over to the sign and read, The Old Stonefort Seventh Day Baptist Church one and one half miles. We were both excited that they kept the Sabbath and they were Baptists, something we understood at the time.

The next day, we went back to Stonefort to look for the church. When we found it, it didn’t appear that they were still having services there. But we didn’t give up. We went door to door till finally, someone knew the Pastor’s name. So we went back home, looked up his name in the phone book and called, but no one was at home, so we left a message. And  guess what? He called us back, and invited us to come to church. I told Patty we weren’t going to mess around, if it felt right we were going to join! The second week we were there, we joined. The pastor taught, the definition for righteousness was found in Psalms 119:172 “My tongue shall speak of your Word for all Your commandments are righteousness.” And also that the definition for sin was found in 1^st John 3:4 “ Who ever commits sin also disobeys the law: for sin is disobedience to the law.” This was something we could understand. We were growing! As I read God’s Word, it was like He was speaking straight to me, and I understood what He was saying, as I never had before.

As I went my way earning my living selling insurance, I found myself witnessing everyday and I knew God was calling me to teach others what He had taught me.

On January 1^st 2000, I publicly answered the call to preach. I knew God was calling me as an Evangelist to establish Sabbath keeping churches where His truth is preached! On Veterans Day 2000, we held the first service of the Marion Sabbath Fellowship.

As I prepared my messages I realized that in order to be a Sabbath keeper, We must keep all of God’s Sabbaths as stated in Leviticus Chapter 23 and Deuteronomy Chapter 16. I took this thought back to the Pastor of the 7^th Day Baptist Church. He said he didn’t mind recognizing them, but he didn’t think we could keep them. He proceeded to preach messages to proclaim these feast days were nailed to the cross along with animal sacrifices. I told him that Jesus was nailed to the cross as our perfect sacrifice; therefore, there is no more need for blood sacrifices. But the days were God’s Holy Sabbaths and shadows of things to come. (Collossians 2:17)

The necessity of keeping God’s annual Sabbaths led me to leave the 7^th Day Baptist Denomination, And start a new Denomination, or rather proclaim and old one The Philadelphia Church. Starting with The Philadelphia Church-Stonefort. The Philadelphia church’s mission is to bring knowledge of the New Covenant to all of Christianity and preach the good news of Christ’s soon return.       

 www.thephiladelphiachurch.net