My name is Elissa (but I mostly go by my family given nickname, Ellie) and I am a 20-year-old living in Northern California. I am very thankful that I came across CLE because God has opened my eyes to a wide variety of topics... the most important one being repentance.
Most of my family identifies as Catholic but a lot of them aren't very "religious" about it, so I didn't attend mass and I was never confirmed into the church because I didn't do all the rituals but I was baptized as a baby. So the intellectual knowledge I had of God was very limited and most of what I knew about the Catholic church traditions came from attending family funerals.
My parents split when I was 9 and finalized their divorce sometime after, and from my perspective, I believe that this caused something to change in me because I was angry and sad about the divorce and moving out of my dad's house. From then on, I believe the wickedness in my life steadily increased.
When I was a teenager I was in a very unhealthy and sinful relationship for a few years and when I ended it I was a complete mess which led me to living a rebellious lifestyle involving drugs, alcohol, and more fornication. I was very angry at the world at this point and I believe I just wanted to numb and distract myself from my inner corruption and despair.
I was also increasingly invested in liberal politics, feminism, and LGBT stuff. Sometime not long after my breakup I also began to identify as bisexual. I was heavily into demonic, sexual, and perverse music by people/bands like Lady Gaga and Panic! at the Disco. When I say I loved it, I mean it. I went to lots of concerts and dressed immodestly for the occasion. I was also into other stuff like yoga, meditation, and some other new age spirituality because I was trying to get some inner peace. Of course it didn't actually work besides providing some temporary false relief.
I met my next (and most recent) serious boyfriend a little over 2 years ago and he invited me to come to a seeker-sensitive megachurch with his family. I became somewhat interested in learning more about God and I eventually started to profess to be a Christian. After a year of community college I transferred to a "Christian university" and I began learning about the various doctrines of different denominations. I was attempting to learn how to be a Christian but I didn't have understanding at that point and most of what I learned was leavened at best.
I started attending a charismatic church that heavily emphasized prophesying and spiritual gifts. It was very puffed up in pride over it and I developed the same philosophy over time. There was also a lot of emotionalism and performance in the worship part of the service (it was an hour long, half of the entire service). I also attended a prayer meeting at my school affiliated with a college ministry. We mostly focused on pursuing spiritual gifts and signs and wonders. The guy who ran the meetings had us practice seeing into the spiritual realm (he also told us he could see angels a lot), prayed over us to receive the gift of tongues, laid hands on us in prayer to have us fall backwards, tried to teach us to prophesy (not biblically), to have visions, and once told us to try to ascend into the courts of heaven to receive an answer from God about something. (Yes... I know. It was really bad.) There was also an incident I wanted to note on here when gold dust appeared on almost everyone's hands in the room including mine. One of the girls who was probably the most charismatic had gold dust on her hands a lot after that apparently.
That was what happened in my first semester away at college last fall. I came home for winter break and I was skeptical of what happened at school, especially the "ascension" thing he asked us to do... that seemed to me like trying to have an out of body experience and even in my blindness I knew that was extremely dangerous and that I had never seen anything at that point in the bible that would command people to do that. But he had claimed to do things like that as well as teleportation. I was very disturbed by it and I decided I needed to rethink everything that had happened in general.
I decided that over the duration of my break I would read all of the gospels and research the things that happened while I was away. I spent a lot of my time doing that because I was very disturbed by what I had been involved in and I increasingly felt more and more ashamed to the point where I could barely eat anything. I opened to Deuteronomy 18 and I realized that we had been falsely prophesying. Also, later that month God opened my eyes to the meaning of this verse, and I spent lots of time in Lamentations as it comforted me and explained a lot of things to me.:
"Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment." (Lamentations 2:14)
In my research I realized that we had also been doing things like divination, incantation, repetitive/vain prayer, seeking after signs and not at all after Christ, and worst of all I was prideful in everything.
I reached the point where I began to weep in the knowledge of my guilt on the floor of my bedroom. I cried out to God and I felt so ashamed about all I had done; I specifically remember crying out to Him again and again that I was a child of the devil and that I was so sorry. I begged Him for forgiveness. I had fully realized at that point how evil it was in God's sight that I had done all of these things in pride while professing Christ. I don't know how long I was crying on the floor but I was devastated, heartbroken, and disgusted with myself. I am still disgusted by how deceived I was because of the pridefulness of my heart. However, I am so thankful that God opened my eyes after a very short amount of time being involved with that stuff because I know many people can get caught up in it for much longer or just never get out.
I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that night that I was a child of the devil. I was thinking about it even after I had gotten off the floor and when I looked at myself in the mirror I couldn't see myself the same way anymore because the false image I had created of myself in pride was shattered. It came to my mind eventually that I should look at the verse of the day on my bible app, and it was this verse (yes, it was a new age version sadly):
"But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God," (John 1:12)
I began to weep over God's kindness in sending His Son so that a child of the devil like me could become His child. I had carried out the will of the devil for my entire life but God loved me and allowed me into His family even though I never deserved it and I still don't. I was still disgusted at myself but I had realized that Christ had died for me... I actually understood the meaning of it then because I knew more fully the extent of my guilt and sin and how repulsive and abominable it was. However, I didn't realize yet that what happened that night was repentance and faith given to me by God. There is a lot that I had to learn and relearn after that night.
When I told professing Christians about that experience, most of them would say things like: "Oh no, no. You aren't a child of the devil, don't say that." I got the general sense that not many people had similar experiences. This didn't really discourage me because I knew that was a significant night even though I didn't understand it. I began speaking against the false teachings from the previous semester and I could tell that some friends were offended by it but some agreed with me when I showed them scriptures about things like false prophesy, signs and wonders, and tongues. I posted this bible verse in the prayer chapel where the meetings were held next to the poster for the college ministry and I received backlash from some people in the group that were offended but I thought it was the perfect verse to hopefully warn people who entered the building either to attend the weekly meetings or just anyone in general.
"For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time." (Mark 13:22-23)
I started to attend a baptist church that spring when I was at school. I did end up learning some good things, but I also learned many false doctrines/traditions including the Greek word game, false meaning of repentance, and more. I was frustrated and confused because of all the conflicting doctrines I heard from all these different groups because I spent a lot of time listening to sermons online at that point as well as teachings at school. This ended up being problematic for me because I was deceived for a short time about keeping the sabbath and a couple other cultish things. I realize now that a lot of the deception and confusion about things resulted from me not trusting God's word enough and not knowing about the corruption of different bible versions, commentaries, and study bibles. I wasn't fully relying on God to teach me at that point because most people told me that all those resources were good and that was the way to study the bible.
With the false definition of repentance in my mind, I eventually started to question if I had ever turned away from my sin towards God well enough to have ever been saved and I was very sad because I still struggled with it. Sometimes I look back at this and I realize now that I was even repentant of my sin at the same time that I was questioning whether or not I was repenting well enough.
However, God answered my prayers for understanding continually and I am very thankful for that. I could see God's work in my life over time but I just didn't understand the repentance part of my salvation yet.
I ended up getting baptized at the church I attended after coming home after they sent us home due to covid, but over the months I was increasingly wary about certain things. I had questioned denominations before but I felt like I needed to look into it again because I usually just accepted people's usual justifications for it. I believe that was the first article I came across on CLE. I also read the 501c3 article and the teaching about leaven made the dots connect in my head because there were many times where I would disagree with the way bible passages were interpreted at church and I didn't know why we were coming up with something different. Anyway, I decided to talk to them about 501c3 and denominations and it didn't go very well (I wasn't really surprised by that but I was still hopeful initially). So I let them know that I wasn't going to continue attending prior to last Sunday.
When I read the article on repentance I was extremely relieved. I see it all over the scriptures now and my eyes have been opened to so many things. I also find it very interesting how a proper understanding of repentance has made so many other doctrines more clear as well. I am also glad to say that I got a commentary-free KJB after mostly using a women's CSB study bible and ESV. God is teaching me how to rely on Him alone when reading the scriptures and it has been amazing.
I'm thankful that God led me to this ministry because I have learned so much from it already and I have benefited greatly from it. I am very young in my understanding at this point but as I have learned more about what it actually means to sanctify myself, I have begun to put it into practice as God reveals things to me.
Thank you to whoever took the time to read my very long post. I look forward to meeting some people on here and discussing doctrine with you. I pray that God would continue to bless this ministry and guide people to understanding through the work that is being done.
-Ellie
