My Testimony
M.J. Agee
Incoming E-Mail
I first want to tell you that I have your book - End of the Age. I absolutely love it. I don't know much about you. Who are you? When did you meet God? What can you tell me about your friendship with Him?
My Reply
Thanks. I'm so glad you "absolutely love" my book.
I am a 68 (now 71) -year-old great grandmother, a Baptist believer who has been studying the Bible as deep as I can go for over 38 years. The Lord Jesus Christ is my Saviour, Shepherd and Teacher. I do not have the slightest flicker of doubt that Christ is God Almighty and as real as you and me. He controls world events according to his own plan.
Before creating Adam, he decided how man was to be saved and we cannot change that. He is the sovereign of the universe. Who can argue with God? When the Bible says that there is no other name by which we can be saved, we'd better believe it. There is no other Saviour than our Lord Jesus Christ. We can take it or leave it, but we can't change it. Mankind is saved by faith in Christ. There is no other way.
I cannot remember not believing in Christ. I grew up with that certain knowledge implanted in me by my parents. I accepted Christ. I was baptized first in the Methodist Church then in the Baptist Church. I liked the Baptist best because instead of telling stories about the Bible, they opened the Bible and taught directly from it. That is what I like. Scripture is the only rock hard truth we have. Everything else has to be compared with it. However, some time before 1960, I accepted Christ again to make sure and dedicated my life to Him all over again and asked him what he wanted me to do. Little did I know what I was asking for, but I was willing.
I lived near the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, La Mirada, CA, for 27 years and used their library from the time it was built for the most intensive Biblical research you can imagine. The trouble was, in spite of my constant reading, I couldn't get all my questions answered. On certain subjects, authors either left that part out or went off on a tangent so wild that I knew it couldn't be true. In desperation, after seven years of constant reading, I opened my Bible, laid my hands on it, and said, "Lord! you'll have to show me! I want to know everything you want man to know about the Bible, all the deep things, everything."
He answered my prayer beyond anything I could have ever hoped or imagined. As much as I knew about the Scriptures by that time, I still had no idea of the depth of information that was packed into that one small book. There seems to be no end to what we can dig out. The search is fascinating. The Bible gets hold of you and won't let go.
To me, the depth of knowledge exhibited alone proves that every word is God breathed. There is no possible way man alone could have written that book. We never really reach the end. There is always more there than we could have ever anticipated, layer after layer of goodies just waiting to be discovered. The more we know about the Bible as a whole, the more we can see in one passage. Corroborating clues are salted away in unlikely places to reward our search. Even Israel's history takes on new meaning when we realize that those recorded events played out the meaning of prophecies so we could understand them when the time was right.
When the Six-Day War took place in 1967, I thought that it just might be significant. Israel grew four major leaves and fulfilled the Fig Tree Parable. No matter what else happened later on, that was the first time Israel grew like that. The whole world was astonished. I tucked all that information away on a back burner in my brain and let it simmer for a whole year.
Then when Bobby Kennedy died on the first anniversary of the beginning of the Six-Day War, somehow everything jelled for me. It was like an invisible fist slapped into another hand punctuating the thought, "Take another look at this DATE; it is important."
God's Blueprint of End-time Events came clear to me that day. The Lord had to do it. I didn't mull it over that much on that particular day. The knowledge just washed over me. I knew then when things would happen at the end of this age. I finally understood God's overall plan. No amount of studying since has cast any doubt on it whatsoever (except that at first I thought the Translation of the Tribulation Saints was in the middle of the Tribulation--it is at the end of the shortened Tribulation). The more I study, the more I find to corroborate every small detail. I am as amazed to be in on this as anyone else.
It is only because we live in the time of the end that we can know what those before us could not. When I read Daniel's "knowledge shall be increased," I had no idea how much it would expand. Who could have even imagined the world-wide Internet?...
Incoming Email
You made mention of how you sat down and wrote every verse in Revelation and how you wrote down all the verses about heaven etc. etc. when you determine to study the Word. What would be very interesting is your testimony regarding your efforts over the last 30 years or so....Why? Well, I think that it is fascinating that the Lord has used a 68 year old [now 69] (well preserved, I might add) Grandma to come up with such jewels out of the Word of God. It is a testimony to all of us that God is not a respecter of persons and you do not need a seminary degree and initials after or before your name to get an understanding of scripture.
But it does take effort. It would give the rest of us an idea of the kind of effort that is required if one is really serious about the Word.
It adds some validity to your work (although it speaks for itself) when one realizes the hours and hours of effort that went into it.
I know that you are short of time, you are short of web space and you are probably reticent to 'blow your horn' but this would be fascinating material to add to your web site. Your work ethic really should be shared. Locating it in one place on your web would be very helpful and I would bet that many feel that same way. You could put it in the "My Picture" section. But re-label it "My Testimony" and keep the mug shot...
My reply
...I spent every bit of time I could on Bible study. I ran to do my work so I could get back to it. I studied many a night till 3 AM when I had to get up around 5:00. I'd find something new and mark the place to start in the morning. Only then could I tumble into bed and sleep...
Things I believe
I believe in the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments, as verbally and completely inspired by God, actually God-breathed, inerrant in the original writings, and the supreme and final authority in faith and life. "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (II Peter 1:21).
I believe that "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself" (II Cor. 5:19), that "in him (Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9), that the Lord Jesus Christ is "My Lord and my God" (John 20:28), the first and the last, "the Almighty" (Rev. 1:8), "The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9:6).
I believe that "whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
I believe that "without shedding of blood is no remission" (Heb. 9:22). Without Jesus' perfect sacrifice and shedding of his blood, we would be without a Saviour. He died in our stead and took sin out of the way as an issue in Salvation. It is now, "What think ye of Christ?" (Mt. 22:42)
I believe in the security of the believer, that every believer is made complete in Christ at the new birth; that in the new birth, believers receive the Holy Spirit as part of their inheritance in the Lord (John 1:16; 14:16-18; Col. 2:8-13). Ephesians 1:13,14 says, "after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory."
I believe that when one accepts Christ as his/her own personal Saviour, "he was purged from his old sins" (II Peter 1:9), and that afterward, when we sin, we must confess our known sins to God so he can cleanse us from "all unrighteousness" (I John 1:9). If we do not, we are out of fellowship with God (I John 1:6) and are quenching his Holy Spirit, and I Thess. 5:19 says, "Quench not the Spirit."
I believe we are working for the "prize" of being a wise virgin, with plenty of the oil of the Holy Spirit, chosen as a member of the Bride of Christ, and caught up to Heaven by the Bridegroom in the Pre-Trib Rapture. Luke 21:36 says, "Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted WORTHY TO ESCAPE all these things (the Tribulation) that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man." "I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 3:14), the Rapture.
Incoming Email
You say that you can't remember a time in your life when you did not believe that Jesus Christ is God. My question to you is this. Do you ever remember being lost in your sin, in need of a saviour? Do you ever remember a time in your life when you were headed for hell and deserved to go there because of sin? All that I see in your testimony is that you've been baptised. The KJV Bible tells us the only way into the kingdom of God is to be BORN AGAIN. So my question to you have been Born Again or have you just been baptized?
My reply
Don't worry. I am BORN AGAIN. Surely, you don't think I could possibly learn so much about Scripture without the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Bible is nonsense to unbelievers.
I accepted Christ before I was baptized--both times. Having been sprinkled the first time, and after finding out that baptizo meant immersed, I wanted to be immersed as Jesus was. Later, when I was beginning intense Bible study in earnest, I prayed again and asked Christ to be my Saviour. I just wanted to be certain. I told him I was turning my life over to him 100% and asked to be filled with his Holy Spirit. I asked him to help me understand his Word.
No, I have never thought I was lost in sin and headed for hell; I knew better. I was sure I was headed for Heaven because of John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." I was raised attending church and getting good basic doctrine all along.
Pentecost Scriptures
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Contact me for more information. My e-mail address is: mjagee@pe.net
8641 Sugar Gum Road, Riverside, CA, 92508, USA; (909) 653-4110, FAX (909) 697-8960
Updated 1-25-98
© 1996, 1997 Marilyn J. Agee