pdf version of this testimony
Index to All Christian Topics
|
Charles Pinkney: A Brief Testimony I would like to share a little about my own spiritual background. Usually in Christian meetings plain sharing in the form of 'God talk' may not always occur. So if I may, I will share some events that highlight significant chapters in my own 'God quest.' There are principle events scattered over years that brought me into belief in Jesus. I like to call these my God stories. These experiences reveal the supernatural intervention of Heaven and the Lord Jesus toward me throughout my life. These experiences I consider to be God initiated and God enacted. My
God stories are modest, and may or may not be like
the testimonies of others, for God has done and is
still doing amazing work in millions of lives and
has been working thus since the birth of the 'church'
on pentecost. God stories bear witness that since
the beginning of Christianity the Lord has been making
and equipping disciples. Truly God is the same yesterday,
today and tomorrow. Testimonies of God's grace and
power ought rightfully, to be normative
to believers. Theological unbelief exists in some
religious traditions that disallow or marginalize
the supernatural. Italicized items
will denote matters that might be questioned, misunderstand,
even rejected owing to institutional unbelief. In
the final analysis, But traditions of men should never
impede the truths which are given to us in Scripture.
(Matthew 15) The Bible reveals that In a time shortly to come the Kingdom of God will be manifested reality upon the earth. After the Jews recognize the Messiah who they rejected, and receive their redemption, the Messianic age will come and the glory of God will fill the renewed earth. The epistles penned by the apostles speak about a God-transformed life, a new creation. This new creation experience allows believers to be recipients of the down payment of these heavenly things for which Jesus prayed in John 17. (This is new creature is spoken of in 2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV) Strangely, while we become new creatures of the God kind, the world neither recognizes this or comprehends it. It remains hidden to their eyes.
Until I was forty years of age, I was a faithful church goer. At various times I have been a Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and attended a Congregational church regularly. I sang in choirs and taught Sunday School. Outwardly, I looked as good as any other member of the congregation. All the while, I noted a lack of the evidence of any sort of Spirituality. I was familiar with church house routine. I had a fondness for the familiar church traditions. I liked well-performed music. I liked the casual relationship with some friendly folks abeit for most part, superficial friendliness. But God was absent from my life in any real sense. I did not know Him. As every other unregenerate human being, my heart all the while, was desperately wicked. I walked in vanity focused on myself. Although I was a sinner I considered myself better than most. My mind was unrenewed. I had no knowledge or faith in the Word of Truth. In God's eyes I was a tare among any wheat that may have existed in any of these congregations. I had an inner desire to really know God from my earliest days. I was broght up with a curiosity about the supernatural and spiritual world. I sought the mysteries of God while in college and outside of church activities, In a search for deeper spiritual insight I explored the world of Theosophy, Mysticism, Astrology, Hinduism and Eastern Philosophy. Of these I knew more than a little; but these pursuits proved to be only vanity. Two or three years before I was saved I returned from a night at the local piano bar where I sipped wine and sang in company of my good but worldly friends. Later that night, I had a powerful night vision. As the vision commenced, I saw portrayed before me an huge, ancient book upon a table. I began to turn each yellowed page. Page after page revealed mysterious symbols and inscriptions. There were archane glyphs, charms and symbols representing the deep hidden mysteries of God. Suddenly the scene changed. The pages of the text changed. As I turned the pages, the book turned into another ancient book, The Holy Bible. The scene changed again. I was alone another room. An unseen someone placed a white robe upon me. The voice of that someone announced, "With this garment upon you will be a spokesman for God". Then another scene followed. I was in the company of several others all gathered together in a circle. While I was wearing this robe, I began to act and speak as if Jesus was speaking through me. There was a powerful sense of a Holy presence in our midst. God was moving upon and acting through all. When I awoke from this vision my body was tingling. There was a sensation like electricity pulsing through my body from head to toe. Following this vision, I said to myself, "There is truly a God life and a world of Spiritual experience that I must one day pursue and when I do It will be all consuming and I will never be able to escape from it or return to my ordinary life style. It was during these years, my marriage had descended to ruin. It became clear to me that my life were not that of a good and loving husband, or a good role model for my children. Time passed after a divorce and I felt a growing stress, depression and emotional instability. A powerful lonliness grew within me. I felt unloved and unhappy. For months I studied to find out how I might reconcile with my wife in order to restore a loving relationship. I attempted counseling and group therapy. But no methodology, counseling or worldly wisdom could bring peace to my mind. I began to drink more to medicate myself. During this time I believe the Lord's grace kept me from bailing out into another relationship which surely would have ended in a similar tragedy.
I
reached the nadir of my depression at the end of Christmas
vacation from my classroom. It was on the the night
of the New Year of 1981in my darkest hour, I called
out with tears and desperation for God to reveal himself
to me and bring me out of the darkness and fearful
torment I was living in. Finally I was ready to do
serious business with God. My heart was prepared sufficiently.
It was broken (see Psalm 51.) I realized my hopeless
and wretched condition. In only seconds after this
brief but heartfelt prayer God answered my prayer.
He began to make his presence known. God's grace and
mercy brought relief, my racing mind became
still. Calm settled into my soul. Words
came into focus in my mind. They dropped from somewhere
outside myself and registered clearly as complete
sentances in my mind. Following this night I wanted to share the experience of my encounter with God, about his power and his unlimited love. But who would I share it with, with students at school? Was there any church where this kind of sharing would be allowed? I didn't know of one. What pastors are religous leaders would allow that I had really had an encounter with a Holy God? My ex wife shared that she was happy that I did not feel so desperate and unstable for what ever reason. I did not know where such God-touched believers could go or what they were to do to share a testimony of God touching their life. My youngest sister Edie had been born again around this time and began to encourage me. Someone told me there was an evangelist she followed who shared deep Spiritual truths in his teachings. I thought that sounded good. So I began to listen to that man's teaching. His message essentially said it is all in the Bible. There is just so much to believe in the Bible! The Bible when examined seriously had marvelous revelation. He also taught that there was a Holy Spirit power from God to enable believers. I began to read the Bible regularly. At first my mind tried to read and comprehend the Bible but I would fall asleep before I got very far. I still felt the desire to go about with my old friends, drink and carry on in the familiar pleasures of the habitual night life. I also began to watch more broadcasts of Christian evangelists and said the 'sinner's prayer' every chance I'd get. A large evangelistic conference came to Minneapolis five months later, in May. It was the Kenneth Copeland Ministry. I arrived to find the auditorium seemed filled to capacity. I proceeded up the ramp to the second floor. As I ascended the stairs I heard a huge volume of sound coming from the auditorium it was the sound of worship. I could literally feel the weight of the presence of God in a tangible way. There was amazing worship. I had not seen, heard or experienced anything like it before. People were swept up in a true passion for worship. Their hands were uplifted they seemed oblivious of anything else but God. Although I was thrilled and inwardly moved by the experience I still wanted to leave early to meet some piano bar folks. That very important mile stone moment did not change me to any great degree. My heart was still entangled in my habits and thought patters from my old life style. In the Summer, July of that year, I was doing summer work on property I owned in rural North Dakota. I had been invited to sing in an AG church in a near by town that Sunday. This AG pastor had come to visit my sister Mary in town before that scheduled Sunday. She lived next door to me so I was invited over. The pastor told my sister, her husband, and I about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. I had no theological objections about this and wanted to go deeper with God. There were some Bible verses shared to validate the practice. Then we gathered for prayer and the laying on of hands. Just let the spirit move you to speak! Don't try to formulate, don't try to imitate! I was embarrassed and somewhat put off, when I was asked to do something like expressing words outside of my own vocabulary that I did not even know. So utterance was to be released in my Spirit. I said to the group, "I would go home and do it." I did just that. That night I had a deep and life changing experience. Later, that same night about 3 in the morning a friend came over demonized and drunk. I had a sense that he was ready to know about this God Life and I wanted him to know what I had experienced but I was ignorant about how to do it. I knew too little to be able lead him into the prayer of salvation even though he may have been ready at that moment. The morning came. I may have slept a few hours. When I awoke, I was powerfully aware that I was aware that I was experiencing something totally new. It was the new creation. I felt lighter than air. The sky was bluer, the world was more beautiful, I felt peace and joy that goes beyond my ability to describe it. In the days following, the Bible became an asset I was never without. From Genesis the Revelation, It provided continuous revelation of the most amazing kind. The following Sunday morning arrived. I was to sing at that church. Throughout the entire morning, I was in the grip of a compelling Spiritual force that possessed the focus of my thoughts. It was a force beyond myself. I became fixated upon one phrase, "Of all the sinners in the world, I am the chief!" For several hours I was inside what seemed a spiritual 'vacuum jar.' No other thought could enter that vacuum. That morning I came forward to sing my special. Now I was compelled to deliver that phrase before the assembled church. Who cares what anybody might think or say? The words came out slowly as one delivering up in child in birth. Following after that moment there was an out-pouring of the anointing that grasped me. This same anointing has fueled thoughts and studies; praise and worship. After that it became a regular feature of my life. God was so very present. His revelation was continuous. The Rhema of God (revelation and understanding) attended the Scriptures as I studied. (Man does not live by bread only but by every word.. )(Gk. Rhema) that proceeds from His mouth.) That fall, eight months after my first encounter with the Lord, I returned to my teaching job. Every evening I smoked my pipe and drank my liquor until my tobacco supply was gone. Soon my liquor supply was left, untouched. I had no desire to buy more. The desire to consume tobacco or alcohol disappeared. For the next 3 years or more years or more, I taught during the day and spent all of my time after work listening to a number of (anointed) Bible teachers, then I would read the Bible into the night. God's presence was a reality and that presence grew stronger and stronger each day. There was no TV, no entertainment, no daily news reports. I was growing as a disciple of the Lord. During this chapter of my God story, my one passion was being with God and I basked in the warmth of His presence.
Coincidental
with this, at this time I was beginning to experience
the Spirit of Truth and
the phenomena of being Crucified to the
World. To clarify,
I can only try to explain that this was a clear witness
within my spirit. I had an inner knowing to discern
the things that were of God and the things that were
tainted by worldly and spiritual darkness or human
vanity. Traditional Christian hymns and even contemporary
Christian music for the most part, jangled my spirit.
Too often In contemporary Christian music there was
a sense that the artist was trying to draw attention
to himself with his or her own performance style.
Many forms of music are laden with a religiosity without
anointing. Soul music is the kind so
imbued with the performer's ego that it loses its
message and Spiritual power. The Spirit of Truth became an amazing witness, evident in every possible arena of life. Christian broadcasts, magazines and books clearly resonated to be of God or without God. Most published articles were discerned to have a spiritual emptiness being without the Spirit. They were religious, flat; essentially intellectual without anointing. In the domain of work, classrooms, at school activities and times spent with my own children, all public events and professional meetings registered as empty, full of deadness; mere noise performed with vanity. I now know this is what Paul the apostle called, being "crucified to the world and the world to me." During these years, any time I entered a church house (churches) if the Spirit of God was absent. There was a pawl of deadness that prevailed. There was a tangible sense of deadly emptiness. This was a sense that was clearly discerned but not based upon intellect or reason. My spirit would become grieved at the absence of God life. How long I would wonder have the souls who come to this place not knowing that there was no God life present, or even if he had ever been resident. It was this experience that has guided and compelled my spiritual life since that time. I felt motivated to encourage believers to literally experience the reality of God. I saw the great need to put God life and God's direction back into the fellowship of believers. The intimacy of the family of God must be restored. Believers must be brought to an awareness that they are called as saints and disciples. This has been absent from nearly all churches who practice the delineation of clergy and laity. Body fellowship and ministry must also be restored. Releasing individual believers in their own personal callings to minister their Godly Gift must likewise be restored. During my time of being discipled in my 'back of the desert,' I felt entirely like an alien, a wayfarer, in every respect. Church-house preaching "fell to the ground." Most sermons or teaching by Bible experts resonated similarly without life, uninspired, second-hand doctrine not Spirit inspired revelation. Emotional hype and contrived preaching gimmicks were everywhere in evidence. I knew it for what most of it was, vanity and self promotion. Discerning Life and Death in Religion In the years that followed, I carefully listened to hundred of sermons by countless preachers, evangelists, and conference speakers. I believe I heard every conceivable sermon presented with varying degrees of passion, knowledge and revelation, but whether evangelical or charismatic these had one commonality - - the messaged too often promoted the institutional church experience. It was from these dead ashes that I had been released. Something was so wrong with this kind of churchianity. It labors under human understandings and is coupled with human authority. Except in rare examples, Bible teaching focused upon the gifts of one man. The messaged usually portrayed theology and doctrinal concepts but revealed very little revelation or experience in heavenly matters. Submission to hierarchical form and structure of the formalistic church remained. In most traditional churches "discipleship" is, for all practical purposes, a foreign concept as it deemphasized experiencing God or doing the works of God. Church life was and remains about promoting the institution and submission to it or its leaders. In 1995 I began writing a book which might have been called The Gospel for Dummies, or Practical Discipleship, but I did not want to present another religious book title in the market of Christian Books. These are produced by the tens of thousands for the Christian marketplace, each claiming some new doctrine or revelation and each contrived to add to the fame and fortune of the authors. So I decided upon this title, The Gospel Without Religion. The purpose of the writing would be to show to people who, like myself who were hungry to know God more but were stymied in religion. To enable religious people to discover God's reality. Outside the context of the religious paradigm, I hoped to reiterate the simplicity of the God life, the way the apostles described it; no more, no less. About a year after the anniversary of my first God encounter, in my one room back of the desert ghetto apartment, I experienced hearing the audible voice of God on one occasion in a night vision. The heavenly voice (I always ask others to describe their own experience with the audible voice) addressed the message of Ephesians 4: relative to the gifts given to the Body to mature us all into the form of one perfect man: And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ, 13) till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; 140 that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, 15but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head- " The years following were punctuated with some amazing and special times in the Spirit, There are many God stories that could be shared involving- I am cautioned not be too presumptuous and draw attention to myself - visions of things to come, traveling to far away places to minister in the Spirit, angelic visits and other such things that are attested to in the Book of Acts and the Epistles. This kind of testimonial sadly is not often well received among some evangelicals. Too often such testimonies produce distrust or argument rather than faith-building hope. As one prominent world-reknowned international Bible teacher once blustered on his radio broadcast, "If anyone ever told me that they had a visit with an angel I would tell him, it is time for him to visit the booby hatch." J. Vernon McGee,1990, Such well meaning Bible teaching results in one thing, disbelief. Such wrong beliefs and teaching grieves me. As Jesus the Great Shepherd and gatherer of his flock stated, "How I would loved to have gathered you as a mother hen gathers her own young, but you would not" (allow it.) And sadly the body remains so divided into disassociated fragments we can only wonder when this oneness, this one perfect man come to be? Finally, I wish to say that nothing in my testimony should suggest that I am unique from another other man or woman that God has called. Those (any) who ask, seek and knock, find Grace in His sight. It is a good and pleasant thing to share koinonia (fellowship of the Body.) For intimacy and fellowship as possible with those of like hearts, who seek God with openess to the Holy Spirit. It is my hearts desire that we who call ourselves Christians, welcome and receive from one other who are recipients of their own unique gifts of God. As it states in 1Peter 4:10.; For as many who have received the gift, minister (that gift) unto one another as stewards of the manifold grace of God. This is the very form given to us to express the kingdom of heaven, As it was in Simon Peter's day, so is it today. Charles Pinkney Youtube.com/user/cornetcharlie/ Chapters and Book_Titles Charles
Pinkney E
Book 1: Index to all Charles Pinkney Christian Titles
|