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Edwin Romero's Testimony

A Year of Awakening

The year 2009 was one of much convulsion for my life, thank God. It was also a year of much political, social, economic convulsion in our country, Honduras. That was the year when I experienced the greatest effects of my past and present sins and failures, of my wrong knowledge as well as of my pride. My marriage was in shambles, there was no way I could responsibly cover my debts, and my relationship with God was exposed for what it was - a farce.

But that was also the year when God called me to come out of all the religious works of men, which were my daily practice for years, and have an encounter with Him outside the churches of this world. It was something I did not ask for, but I was groaning inside for a real change. I just had no idea how it would happen.

My Early Years

I remember hearing about God since I was a child. Firstborn of six brothers and one sister, I was taught that I had to be an example to my siblings. Of course, I didn’t succeed at that, not positively.

My mother always tried to take us to church, at least to Sunday school, as she felt it was her responsibility to lead us in the Lord’s ways since my father was contrary to her faith for the first 13 years of their marriage. During my early years, I just knew that going to church was the most normal thing for our family. We learned “good things” about God and about the Bible at Sunday school, all the stories about Jesus with His disciples, about some patriarchs, kings, and prophets of the Old Testament. I kind of enjoyed those lessons and was good at memorizing Bible verses. However, I didn’t really like the routine of going to church.

When I was around 9 years old, perhaps before that time, my father kept my mother from going to church anymore. But it was then that I went to some special evening services where they would show a movie called Hell. In that movie, which I saw about three times, they depicted all the horrors of Hell for those who refused to accept Jesus as their personal Savior.

At the end of the presentation, there came a brief reflection by the pastor where he asked who wanted to accept Jesus Christ and go to Heaven and thus avoid going to Hell. I raised my hand with the conviction that I did not want to go to Hell, and I did the same the three times I saw that movie, just to make sure I was “ready.” I didn’t care much about going to Heaven, as the picture I got from the sermons was of a place where people would be eternally prostrated before God, “worshiping” Him. Playing soccer with my friends was way more attractive than that.

As a teenager, I witnessed some changes in my house. We moved to another neighborhood, to our own house, and we were no longer attending any church. Then my mother had a talk with a pastor from another church, a Pentecostal one, and she made a new commitment in that time.

A short time later, to our surprise, my father also decided to “accept Jesus.” He had stopped drinking alcohol before he went to any church; he had made a decision not to go on with that habit as he probably realized it was destroying him and his family.

We resumed our church attendance, but by that time I had begun to question what I heard at church, at school, and at home.

I remember questioning my mother and leaving her without answers when I asked her, “How come believing in God is a voluntary matter, when if you don’t do it, you go to Hell? I see we have no choice there, and if we don’t do God’s will, we do Satan’s will. Where is our own will, then?”

I don’t know exactly where those ideas came from, as I didn’t talk about those matters with friends, except with one uncle, Roberto, who was more like a friend, and who had also been raised in church.

However, I kept going to church for a time during my adolescence, but I didn’t like what I saw in Pentecostal circles. In the past, we had attended the Holiness Church, one of conservative cut. There came a time when this Pentecostal church had some leadership problems, some internal divisions that were never admitted as such, which made my parents look for another church. My father went to another Holiness Church, which he found particularly interesting. The leaders were all young and “well learned” in the Scriptures. They didn’t have so much of the religious wildness that we saw at the Pentecostal church. Indeed, they were pretty neat people.

I went to that place with my parents for a while, but then I got totally discouraged by the church routine, and I preferred to hang out with my friends. I had also started to pursue my interest in girls and music, specifically rock music, which became an addiction to me, yet it was my main motivation to start learning English. My father decided not to force me or my brothers to go to church with them, so I only went on occasion, but it was an empty attendance. I gained some intellectual knowledge, but it had no practical use in my life.

First Serious Commitment

When I was about 17 years old, I had a very close friend with whom we shared many things, good and bad, mostly bad. One day, we heard of a Christian “crusade” that would take place in a church near our house, the Pentecostal church where my parents had attended for a few years. We decided to go to a service, but with the idea of mocking the weird people in that place. However, as we arrived, there were ushers at the door who led us to one of the seats in the middle. We tried to refuse, but they took us by the hand and led us there.

We felt so weird in the middle of the “revival” - people singing, shouting, crying, “speaking in tongues,” and all sorts of things you would see at a Pentecostal service. We felt really stupid in their midst, as we didn’t understand what they were doing. We made efforts not to laugh at what we saw, and we failed.

When the guest preacher, a tough-looking lady in her 50’s, was done with her “powerful” message, she started calling people to come in front and “accept Jesus.” My friend Henry and I tried to hide from her insistence on the people who wanted to take that “unique opportunity” to “get right with God.” Then she looked directly at us – I believe it was her revenge because we had been laughing - and she asked us to come to the front. She motioned to some leaders to take us there so she could pray for us. We felt really dumb, but we were incapable of refusing.

After that service, we felt a strange sensation that we couldn’t take that event lightly, or we would get in serious trouble. We knew our lives were meaningless. So we made a decision. We said, “OK, let’s give it a serious try. No more chasing girls, no more masturbation, no more cursing, no more mocking people.”

For a short while, it appeared to work. I started reading the Bible and praying the way I could. We went to church regularly and tried to be “good Christians.”

Amazingly, we stopped cussing, which had been a really shameful condition we had, using cuss words for every idea we expressed, not at home, of course. Henry and I confessed our sins and failures to each other, and we found out that it was impossible to stop masturbating. Then, new girls came to church, and that was another thing to deal with. They became a real motivation for us to go to church, but they also “helped” us to go astray.

All the while, we appeared to be good boys in church and at home. Later on, Henry got discouraged and decided to leave the church. I remained there a little longer and went on to get baptized in water. I hoped that after such ritual, I would be a new man, a true child of God. My misery became greater, however, as I felt even more condemned when I sinned again, and now I had my friends laughing at me because I was still the same. No prayer, no Bible reading, no fasting helped me a bit to become a real new creature as they promised and demanded from the pulpit.

Rebellion and Searching

After a year of church attendance and participating in several activities, although I had gained some Bible knowledge, I felt a total failure. I was jealous that my friends could go to parties and hang out with girls while I was repressed. One day I made a very honest prayer. Crying on my knees at a back pew of the temple, I said, “God, I am really sorry! I can’t go on like this. My true desire is to know the world; I can’t deny to You that I want to sin, and I can’t live this ‘Christian’ life.”

That was my last day at church for that time.

Then I started a search for real meaning in life. I found that I couldn’t enjoy the world openly as I still had what I thought was the fear of God. However, I furtively indulged any time I could in fornication, pornography, and things like that. I felt miserable because I couldn’t “sin openly,” and I was convinced that I didn’t want to step in a church doorway again. I got tired of my hypocrisy while being there, but I also resented the hypocrisy of the adult leaders, full of arrogance, lies, and gossip. I hated the preaching, which was redundant and meaningless, eternally boring.

I was always curious about the mysteries of life and of the universe. I was constantly haunted by the idea that there had to be something about God greater than the church taught. So I got crazy about UFO literature and some New Age books, especially by Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, and other materials related to ancient cultures and mysticism. I thought I was discovering why I wasn’t satisfied with what I learned at church. I found those new teachings so fascinating that I got to the point of believing that the “Christians” I knew hadn’t ten percent of the “wisdom” I was finding in those books. Actually, I wasn’t so wrong about that.

New Attempt to Get Right

Eight years passed and I was firm in my commitment to not go back to a church. However, I got a job as a teacher at a “Christian” school (not my present job) where the principal asked me about my relationship with God. I told her I had none at that moment, and she said, “God has His purposes, and who knows if He has something for you here?” I needed the job, so I readily accepted it.

That school made yearly retreats to “minister” to the students. I decided to go on one of those retreats and see what would happen there. I felt literally bombarded in that retreat. Every activity and teaching confronted me with the fact that I needed to have God in my life, according to all they said. I resisted until the final service, when I felt overwhelmed by an atmosphere of boys and girls “giving their lives to Jesus.” All of a sudden, I started feeling the conviction that I had failed God miserably. I broke down in tears and I couldn’t help going with the flow. I “reconciled” to Jesus again.

I started attending church once more, another Holiness Church that functioned in the same school building where I worked. I was now about 26. The pastor was a well-learned man, balanced in his teachings, and he made sense to me. He got close to me and said he wanted to make a disciple of me.

I studied the Bible with him for a couple of years, but then I started sinning again, although I was one of the most promising disciples according to the pastor. This time I didn’t know what to do, but I tried as hard as I could to stay out of trouble. For some reason, certainly not because of my looks, several girls were trying my “holiness” all the time. Of course, I failed again.

Looking For Greener Pastures

One day, I was invited to another church, “Palabra Revelada” (“Revealed Word”). I was told there were very interesting Bible studies on Tuesdays, and I was invited to come even if I belonged to another church. When I first entered the church, I was impressed by the woman who was preaching. She looked so different from any other preacher I had ever met or heard. She was bold and sounded like someone who had authority in what she said.

At that time, I had also been doing the Amway business and I found the “faith teachings” at PR to be so similar to Amway’s motivational rallies. She also sounded as mystic as those New Age books I had red before. Then I met her husband who, temporarily, was pastoring another part of the church in a different location. He was really wild; I compared him to John the Baptist by his outfit and his crazy way of teaching (I realize now that John wasn’t like that). This man was nothing like any traditional pastor I had met. For a moment I thought, “This is it! It’s what I’ve been looking for!”

I asked two friends to come with me, Tirsa, my best friend then, and Delia, who became my wife. (They weren’t involved in any church.) They were also impressed, but I doubt that it was for the same reasons. I thought I could combine the teachings from the Holiness Church and the ones at Palabra Revelada. However, I was already physically involved with Delia, and we both knew we were wrong and had to face our sin. I left the Holiness Church and joined Palabra Revelada. We decided to talk to these pastors at PR who lent us a “sympathetic” ear. They tried to help us as much as they could, leading us to repentance and to be sexually separate until we were ready to get married, if that was God’s will.

The day came when we were ready to get married. The pastors were very kind to us, giving us all their support to see us “restored.” We, too, thought we were being restored, and we started doing all we could to learn and serve diligently at that church. The pastor, Mirna Simonson, once said that she could sense a “big call” on my life. This was the second time I heard something similar said about me. Honestly, I wanted to believe that, but I had no idea what she was talking about, neither was I much interested in finding out.

Hard Work Begins

As time went by, we became leaders in that church. We started by visiting people with the outreach ministry, and I joined the praise band; then I was in charge of the youth group, and finally I became one of a team of pastors in that church, and so did my wife, later. We served in every possible way, from setting up the chairs for the service to preaching to counseling and anything that was asked of us. Our calendar was always full with church activities - services, meetings, counseling sessions, special prayer times, retreats, seminars, etc. People thought we were a good example at church, and we believed that, too, for a time.

People in that church liked us very much for several reasons they mentioned, and we tried to be there for anyone who required it. Yet we could never develop a deep, close relationship with the main pastors, or anyone else for that matter. We wanted to be close to the pastors, and so did they, I believe, and we tried somehow, but it was just not possible. They tried to show openness to us, especially when I talked about our marriage problems, which had become more serious year by year. We always thought they had done great things for us, like supporting us in our “ministries” or even helping us economically a couple of times.

I didn’t clearly understand why we could never prosper in anything, and even if we received some good income, like we did on occasion, it was never enough. We had given tithes and offerings, and we’d thought we did this with a sincere heart, but we weren’t blessed in it. Other sincere members of the congregation told us the same thing.

As I didn’t experience any fulfillment in any area of my life, I started wondering if something wasn’t right about the church. To start with, I knew about my personal failures and secret sins, but I thought it was only me. However, I observed that our church friends were also tired and frustrated with the church work and in counseling sessions, and they told us of sin and impossible situations in their personal lives. Delia and I felt impotent and frustrated in seeing that we weren’t able to help, although some thought we did. Actually, in many ways we were worse off than many people we tried to help.

A Crucial Year

At the beginning of 2009, we started a Bible study with, and for, the church leaders. I was one of the teachers, and one of the lessons of the program was about the cross. That topic kept me busy in my mind and in my heart. The more I read about it in the Bible, the more I realized that it was not real in me, or in anyone else I knew.

I started crying out to the Lord to show me the way of the cross. I wondered why none of the Christian people I knew were being persecuted, hated, or rejected by the world, except for our annoying attitudes or for our hypocrisy. I also observed that at the highest levels, “apostles” and “prophets” in the same city didn’t really have good relationships with each other; instead they acted like polite business people who always seek their own convenience in any relationship.

I believed that the cross was something that I just had not experienced in my life, not that I understood what it was all about. On one occasion, after preaching in a Sunday afternoon service, I ended up crying and praying with these words, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God; when shall I come and appear before God?” (Psalm 42:1) I couldn’t stop praying those words; it was a very real groaning in my heart, not mere poetry so as to impress the audience.

In April of the same year, I was surfing the web, searching for information about false prophets. I was taken to The Path of Truth where I found an extensive list of them. I red some of the information they had there and then I noticed that they had a window inviting to talk. I entered their chat and talked with Paul Cohen. I told him something about myself and informed him that I was researching about false prophets in case I or my pastors had any marks of falsehood. Of course, I didn’t believe we did, but I felt compelled to say that. We chatted for a few minutes and then I said I would be writing more about myself and my church.

I wrote a letter to Paul, telling him about my situation at church and what I perceived during those days. I told him about the good things I thought we were doing and about some of my concerns. I told him that I feared we had ended up serving the church service instead of serving the Lord of the Church.

When Paul replied to me, he wrote an extensive letter that really made an impact on my life. First of all, I thought that it took God’s life in somebody to take the time to answer in such a thoughtful, insightful, extensive manner to a stranger like me. I felt that God had begun to talk to me through Paul, and I began to experience a deep need to come out of church, so as to see God’s reality, but I wasn’t really sure that it was the right way. One thing that made me even scared was when Paul told me that he could witness both spiritual and physical fornication and adultery in our church. I had committed physical adultery several years ago and had remained quiet about it. I didn’t want to face that reality with anybody. I also felt that, in spite of all, I belonged to the Lord, so I was in spiritual adultery if I was in a church that wasn’t His Church.

We had a couple of exchanges, addressing several ideas about the ways of men and the ways of the Lord, but I wasn’t totally convinced that I was hearing the absolute truth. In fact, although I had said I was researching false prophets to see if even I or my pastors could fall into that category, I wasn’t expecting that such a possibility could be real. So I preferred to step back, and I went back to doing what I knew to do at church, just trying to do better or to put more diligence into my “ministry” and my “discipleship” classes.

Opening Our Eyes

The following six months were a real torture for both me and my wife. We had been having more than enough of destruction with each other, but things got worse for us as a marriage, and the church work became a real drag, so overwhelming that we could hardly endure it anymore. The routine, monotony, and lack of reality that we lived every day, every week at church was a good reflection of our marriage relationship, or the other way around. It was all falling apart, full of deception, mystery, and vain efforts to make things work out.

At every service, I began to notice more errors in the teachings, like never before. However, I thought that was not a good reason to make the radical decision to leave church. But I kept crying out to God that He would show me the way. I wasn’t sure what the way was, but one thing I began to get more convinced of: We were on the wrong track, leading nowhere but to our own hopeless destruction, along with many other people.

Curiously, at the beginning of that same year, Mirna (the “prophetess”) had given an interesting prophecy. She said, “This year we will walk on a path we have never trodden before, we will cross a spiritual Jordan, and the Harlot will be exposed!” I wonder if she ever realized what she was talking about; she never explained. Yet those words became true for us in a serious way.

My wife got concerned when I announced to her that we would definitely leave church. She felt insecure, but at the same time, she felt the same need. As time went by, she began to ask me and push me. She said she couldn’t stand being there with an idea in mind that did not come to pass. She asked me, “Are we really going to leave church? What are we going to do next? When will we take action?”

After we left church, the “apostle,” Bernardo Simonson, speculated that it was my wife who pushed me out. In a way, she did, but not as he surmised. In October of 2009, I told Delia that I had a witness that God would confirm our departure during the coming leadership meeting for that month. It was on the 21st that we had a leaders’ retreat where some new directions would be announced concerning the church work system for the following year.

Curiously, Bernardo began his participation by saying, “We have heard the word ‘church’ for such a long time, and I can tell you that we have no idea what that means. It is much more than what we have thought, and I will soon be telling you more about it. As of now, I can tell you that we have so much to do, but we want to work only with those who are truly committed. Those who are still hesitant, it’s better for you to leave now and find some other place. Make up your minds, as we are not going to walk with the half-hearted….”

Those words resounded in my heart like the sound of the trumpet. It was like God asking me, “Do you want more confirmation?”

Then, it was Mirna’s turn to talk. At every meeting we had with leaders or pastors, we always heard complaints from Bernardo and Mirna, but this time, she excelled! She started addressing the youth, telling them not to look up to us – adults - as an example to follow.

“This is an old, worn out generation; they won’t do much anymore. Their hearts are too hardened and they will not change. You are the ones called to do the job, but don’t do as they have done…” she stated in a very blunt manner.

Wow, those words are still resounding in my mind! Not because I got offended – I knew she was at least partially right. But I was amazed that she thought that her “pastors” and older leaders were in such condition, yet she still considered them pastors and leaders. That was an awful contradiction.

I had already asked her, in another meeting with pastors, what was going on with the church. I asked her, “If we don’t measure up as pastors, how can we expect the sheep to ever get to know the Lord?” Then I added, “I feel that something is terribly wrong with the church in general, not only ours, but as a whole. This makes me think of Paul’s words to the Corinthians when he told them that he feared they might have been deceived even as the serpent deceived Eve.”

Mirna tried to be sympathetic and said she would take some time to talk to me later in private, as I had requested. She did, and when I expressed my thoughts in more detail, she said I was focusing on the external manner of doing things. She said that it was a personal crisis I was going through, a cycle of getting tired of doing the right thing in my own strength, going astray, and then coming back on track.

“You must break with that cycle,” she concluded.

I thought her words made sense. I knew I “obeyed” God only for some time and then I fell in sin again, not experiencing a true change in me, so I thought she could be right. However, I still felt that we were full of contradictions, which I really did not understand.

Parting Time

So, in that leaders’ meeting we had in October, God used the words that Bernardo and Mirna spoke to confirm to me that it was time. All year long, I had been wondering what would happen with the “prophecy” that was given at the beginning. After that retreat, I called Mirna and asked her to give us some time to talk with her and Bernardo.

“I think it’s time we crossed that Jordan once for all,” I told her.

She agreed to meet with us the next day. When I announced my decision to leave the church, she was surprised, but she said she was expecting something like that since the moment I called her. I told them that we were most thankful for all they had done for us and that we didn’t have a problem with anyone at church.

“However, I feel that if I don’t take this road, I will die,” I concluded.

They felt rather confused by the fact that I didn’t know where I was heading. I wasn’t going to another church, and I was emphatic that I didn’t mean to start a new one. I also made it clear that we would not try to persuade anyone at church to follow us.

Mirna said that for many years in her ministry she had seen people come and go, but we were the first that she really didn’t know what to say or think about. “With all that,” she concluded, “I don’t want to be an obstacle to something the Lord might want to do with you. So we cannot stop you, although we wish you wouldn’t leave.”

I had also prayed to God that if it was really His will for us to leave, our talk with Bernardo and Mirna would be in peace. Bernardo tried to persuade us, but Mirna said it was OK to let us go. She said we could have a talk later to see if there was anything I would like to express once we felt free from the pressure of their authority over us. I agreed with that approach, so we established a specific date to address all the leaders to say goodbye and make it clear that we were leaving in peace with all.

On November 4, 2009, we had that meeting. It was in a separate church hall, and it would be with all the leaders and “pastors” of the local church and of the other daughter churches from outside the city. I got there earlier than anybody else. As I was there alone, I opened my Bible and went directly to the Book of Lamentations on a verse I had never stopped to notice:

“The punishment of your iniquity is fulfilled, O daughter of Zion; He will exile you no more...” (Lamentations 4:22).

As I red this Scripture, tears filled my eyes, and I felt that I was about to leave a real prison, though it had been necessary in my life. I really felt the Lord talking to me, encouraging me to have faith and go on all the way.

People blessed us in that meeting, and they prayed for our wellbeing on the path we had decided to take. We had mixed emotions - peace, fear, freedom, pain, etc. Yet I had the strong feeling I was obeying the Lord rather than men, even as I declared to the congregation. With tears in my eyes, I told them they had been our family all those years, but the Lord was calling us out, so it was better to obey Him at the cost of everything.

My wife was rather resentful because we had already heard some comments that we had fallen into apostasy; we believed Bernardo had made those comments without mentioning our names. It was pretty obvious whom he was talking about, yet he never told us directly and even tried to say that he wasn’t talking about us. Only God knows for sure. So Delia complained to them as a body of leaders, telling them that if they had been the friends they claimed to be, they wouldn’t be judging us for our decision, because they didn’t even understand what we were going through. She told them it was obvious they had never really known us.

Delia gave quite a speech, although we had agreed not to mention that at all. This made Mirna really upset and she changed her position and belief that it was the Lord dealing with us. She even advised us, right there, to forget about their church and not pay attention to anything that happened in there ever again. She warned us that, “as a mother,” it was her duty to protect her children. Of course, she said those things in a very polite manner. Then they prayed for us and all the congregation came to hug and kiss us goodbye, crying and confused about exactly why we had to leave.

Two days later, a leadership meeting was summoned. Some concerned friends who remained in the church reported that all the leaders were warned about the “spirit” that had caught us. Mirna told them that the Holy Spirit had revealed to her that we had been deceived on the Internet. Interestingly, in those days I was disconnected from anybody, real or virtual, although I kept reading from several websites; we felt very alone, only with the hope that God was on our side to deliver us. Mirna told the people to cut any relationship with us in any way, personally, by phone, or otherwise. She warned them that they could get “contaminated.”

Meanwhile, my mother and part of my family remained in that church for a few months until the Lord showed them that things were not right, that He was not in that “ministry.” But this is another part of the story.

Desert and Judgment Time

When we left, the first Sunday we stayed at home. We felt an amazing sensation of liberty and freedom, as if we had been walking for miles and then took a break. It really was a break, as the Lord was preparing us to confront our reality, one that was still hidden to ourselves. That Sunday we red the whole book of Hosea, and we felt that all the book talked to us directly, as well as to the church systems, but we didn’t know exactly how. As I kept reading the books of the Prophets, each day they were telling me how the Lord sees the churches of these very days.

Two months after our departure, on December 31, 2009, I decided to contact Paul at The Path of Truth again. I had been asking the Lord to give us direction, as I admitted that we could not make it on our own. We could not be solitary rangers. Some people had told us that if we started a church, they would happily join us. I thought that such was the blind condition of the people; they had no idea that we could be actually more lost than they were.

I wrote a letter to Paul and told him about the latest happenings. Paul informed me that Victor had written me a letter that I never replied to, but I had never received that letter. It was all the Lord’s doing for His purposes with us, especially to show that His work with us was more internal than external, so that we would not rely on men or on external motivation to follow Him outside the camp. I am really thankful we left the church systems without any human pressure; it was an internal working that wouldn’t leave me alone until I obeyed.

The best part of the journey was about to develop. Now that I had established a more steadfast communication with Victor and Paul, they began to clarify many things for me. One thing they said was that we had been sorely contaminated by the Harlot. This was made evident as we kept going, and the time for confronting our sins and our sinful nature arrived. The Lord began to expose our secret sins, by dreams and directly.

We had such a hard time dealing with confrontation and confession of sins, as we had been trained – not directly, but implicitly - to conceal things so as to keep our image intact. It was so hard to admit our wickedness and to ask for forgiveness and to forgive. However, it was the most liberating experience to be able to admit and confess our hidden sins, which had resulted in circumstances that clearly testified against us. We had to confess our adultery (spiritual and physical), lies, pride, deception, wicked fears. Truly we had never met the Lord; instead, we had really been His enemies all the way, hating the truth and loving lies, preferring our own lives over His. The Lord showed me a Scripture that, among many others, I would painfully learn in the practice:

Psalm 50:16-21 MKJV
(16) But to the wicked, God says, “What is it to you, to declare My Precepts, and to take up My covenant in your mouth?
(17) Yea, you hate to be taught, and you toss My Words behind you.
(18) When you saw a thief, then you were pleased to be with him, and you have taken part with adulterers.
(19) You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
(20) You sit; you speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son.
(21) These things you have done, and I have kept silence; you thought that I was like yourself, but I will rebuke you, and set in order before your eyes.”

In these past years, since we left church, we have witnessed the amazing kindness of the Lord, even as we have been able to see our own wickedness. We had been so deceived about ourselves that we were able to deceive others, but God is no fool, most definitely.

His mercy has been way greater than our expectations; He has been doing a marvelous work of exposing, cleansing, healing, rebuking, teaching, and restoring in very specific ways, like never before. He has given us, along with a few others here in Honduras, the grace to see reality for what it is. Now we can tell Truth from error more readily; our judgment of things and of ourselves had been so askew that we thought we knew so much, and so did many people, but we are no longer deceived, by God’s grace.

I am thankful to the Lord for what He has provided for us at The Path of Truth, a true shelter from the storm, because He is present. I had a short, but very significant, dream when I didn’t know much about Victor and Paul, but I had red some at their site:

I saw that my family and I had arrived at a place near a mountain. The ground looked so fertile, so soft and clean, surrounded by hills full of pine trees. We got to a small shack, made of oak logs, like those I had seen only in movies. Out of the shack came two very tall men, about 9 ft. tall. Between them was my father who had passed away in 2004. They came to greet us very happily, inviting us to stay. I was in front and my wife, my mother, and other relatives came after me. I started talking with those men and with my father, but I don’t know what we said, just that they gave us a very warm welcome.

That’s the end of the dream. So here I am today, along with some relatives and friends, learning the ways of the Lord as opposed to what we had known before. It has been quite a challenge, not easy at all, but by His grace, we are on the way we should be. He has made known to us, in many ways, that He has fixed His eyes on us, not because we are something, but because we are nothing. And by His grace we will go on until the end.

“The one who overcomes, this one will be clothed in white clothing. And I will not blot out his name out of the Book of Life, but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.” (Revelation 3:5 MKJV)

Edwin Martin Romero

Tegucigalpa, Honduras

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