by Joel Ingram

This is the testimony of how I met Jesus at the age of 20.

I came from a Christian household and went to church when I was a child. I even attended VBS (vacation bible school). Yet in my teen years, I fell away from Christianity and started walking down the dark paths of this life. I was heavily involved in drugs ranging from LSD to crank, and then I started exploring the occult. I had seen a couple of dark entities growing up and thought it was normal to see these beings. I had never seen Jesus or angels just dark beings.

I felt like I had experienced true hell by the time I was 17 and that was enough to scare the devil out of me. This was not a very pleasant place to be. Although we can’t see in the spirit what is coming to us, we are always guided by Christ in this life. By the time I had turned 20, I thought I had had enough of this life and didn’t think Jesus truly loved us like the Bible tells us He does. (Yet in fact, He loves us even more than what the Bible says.) I had decided to just take my own life not knowing that Jesus was going to guide me directly to Him through my poor choice.

I began to feel the urge to fast. Not sure what this meant, I asked my dad what fasting was. My dad told me that this is when you stop eating and just drink water until Jesus gives you an answer. I told myself, “Christ, if you are real, then I need you to truly forgive my sin.” Even though I asked Jesus to forgive me, I was planing to starve myself to death and just shutting myself off to the world. It would only take a few days and I’d be gone. For those 4 days, I would just go to work, come home, pray, and read the Bible.

The Bible I had in my possession I had stolen when I was 18. I had kept it in my closet until this point. Once I started my fast and reading the Bible to learn more about fasting, I started experiencing dreams like I have never had before. These were dreams about cleaning myself from the old habits. I didn’t realize that we clean ourselves out before we go before His presence.

The fourth night that I was laying in bed, I was not really expecting anything to happen. When I closed my eyes, I heard a voice tell me to “open your eyes.” I thought I was still in my bedroom when I saw the brightest white light. My eyes started adapting to this bright light. I noticed a tall being to my left side dressed in a white robe. My eyes started seeing people walking all around this place. I wasn’t sure where I was and I could not put my thumb on where I was. The light that was gleaming from the center of this place was cutting through my total being with a love and never-ending joy, peace, and comfort that I had never felt before.

Then I noticed a dark haired man running up to me. He was dressed like a king in robes. He asked me, “man what are you doing here?” I replied, “I came to have Jesus forgive me of my sins.” He then smiled at the being to my left. He looks at me and said, “all you have to do is ask.” I was still in a state of awe of where I was and I was thinking to myself “well yeah, that’s what the Bible says.”

The man before me knelt down to me and said, “here you need to eat or you will die.” He took his right hand and just moved it towards me. A loaf of bread manifested in his hand and I took the bread and ate it in 3 bites. I could feel it filling my stomach up. At this point, all of my thoughts came back to me. I realized that I was in Heaven. The man before me smiled, I blinked and I was back in my body eyes opened to the truth.

I had to catch my thoughts about what had just happened. I had just met the King of all creation. My life has never been the same since that day. I know that Christ is real and He really does love us and wants us to accept Him.