by Ernie Lee HoCH [H'CoHen - Tribe of Levi, House of Cohen - the Priest]

In June of 1999, about 8 months ago from the time I write this, I did something that many people would think was an incredibly stupid thing.

I had come to a point in my life where I didn’t know what was truth and what was not (as I had been taught from my youth brought up in a good Christian family and in a fundamental Christian church and attended a fundamental evangelical Baptist college (now Liberty University).

About 4 months earlier I had requested and received a copy of a book, Fossilized Customs, and I was exposed to a factually documented expose’ of The Pagan Sources of Popular Customs. There were times when reading this book that I literally had to put it down, go outside and walk around the block a few times to clear my head and try to assimilate what I was hearing from the book with what I thought I knew to be the truth that was already in my heart from the teachings I had received throughout my life.

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was to “wrestle” with the “truth” I thought I had inside me, verses the facts that proved contrary. It would have been easy to say “Don’t confuse me with the facts, I’m perfectly happy in my ignorance” but I kept wrestling with other things, like why didn’t my Sunday school teachers, preacher, summer christian camp counselors, the traveling evangelists, or even my college professors tell me simple facts (especially that of Yahweh’s Name or the Letter “J”) that anyone could discover in a decent dictionary or an encyclopedia at the local library? It didn’t make sense to me. I only wanted truth and that is what I expected to receive from those who were the “watchers of my soul”; from those who had my eternal life in their charge. Was that too much to ask for?

I knew that all I had been previously taught was falsehoods [lies] as Jer. 16:19 stated. I was brought to a point where I could not trust any man to teach me truth. It was then that I fell broken before my Father and cried out, “Father, I do not know what is truth and what is not. This day I am emptying my mind of all the doctrines and teachings that my ‘fathers’ have filled me with and I come before you as a new born and naked child trusting in You and only You to protect me from the ravenous wolves. No man, not even my earthly father, can protect me from the wolves. Yahweh, my Heavenly Father, only You can protect me and fill me with THE truth and teach me your truthful ways. I rely solely upon you, Father, for protection and guidance knowing that if I ask you for a piece of bread, you will not give me a stone. I know that I will come under criticism for ‘not protecting myself from false doctrine’ and be accused of being ‘blown with every wind of doctrine’ but I will follow You, Yahweh, for in You is my hope of deliverance. Thank you, Father. Help me keep my eyes on You when man, once again, presses me to follow their understandings.”

John 16:13 “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, [that] shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.”