This sermon features Michael Stary sharing his personal testimony about his journey from an Amish background to a deeper faith in Christ. He recounts his upbringing in the Amish community, struggles with sin, and the upheaval within his church, leading to his eventual excommunication. Through reading faith-based literature and engaging with other Christians, he found clarity and a path to salvation, ultimately leading him to embrace a genuine relationship with Christ and leave the Amish traditions behind. The session concludes with encouragement to focus on Jesus and community support.
Key Points: – Michael shares his Amish upbringing and family history. – He describes struggles with sin throughout his teenage years. – His journey included moving between different Amish communities and grappling with church disagreements. – Michael’s perspective on excommunication shifted as he explored biblical teachings and historical Anabaptist roots. – He experienced a transformation after understanding salvation and developed a closer relationship with Christ. – After being excommunicated with his family, they sought new church connections and prioritizing biblical teachings.
Scripture References: – 1 John 5:13 – Luke 12:53
Well, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hope for Wandering Amish. We’re very pleased to have Michael Stary with us this morning and look forward to hearing his life story, his testimony, how the Lord worked in his life, brought him to himself, to all of us ex-Amish and everyone that’s listening in. This will be an encouragement. Just listen in and be encouraged in the Lord, and we’re going to get started real soon here. I’d like to start with a word of prayer.
Dear Lord God, thank you for this opportunity this morning to hear the testimony of your gracious working in this brother’s life. Bless Brother Michael as he gets into sharing. Give him the thoughts and words that you would have him to share. May you be exalted and may many people be encouraged to love and good works, to walk with you faithfully. I pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
All right, I wanted to say that Michael is living in Montana right now. He has a wife and six children there. He used to be living in Michigan, but we’ll hear his story. Let’s just hand it over to you, Brother Michael.
Good morning, everyone. So yeah, my story probably begins like a lot of Amish people’s stories go growing up, but we grew up in a Swiss conservative setting, so our German dialect was a little different. We didn’t speak the same type of dialect, but we could kind of understand each other.
Starting with my ancestors, the name Stary, I thought it was interesting to hear, was it maybe one of the last videos you made from Hope for Wandering Amish, Ephraim? I think you shared on the last names that came into the Amish circles from Jacob Ammon’s, after Jacob Ammon’s time, and Stary is also a name that was added, I believe. So my great-great-grandfather, Peter Arnold Stary, came from Switzerland, and he came over as a single man at the age of 25, and he was a cheesemaker by trade. I don’t think that we can be completely 100% certain if he was Amish when he came over or if he joined the Amish after he came over, but his parents and grandparents definitely were not Amish. His father was a schoolteacher, and his great-grandfather was a schoolteacher also, or what they called a Korrikiricht in the church, which was explained to me as being kind of like what we would call a deacon in our church. He would kind of see that people were coming to church and doing the right thing, and he would keep track of who was there, who was not there, and so forth.
When he came over, the story goes that he worked for this Amish family. It’s very, very possible. I don’t know that we can be 100% certain. He worked for this Amish family and married an Amish woman and joined the Amish. Then on my grandma’s side, this would be on my dad’s side, would be my third great-grandfather, I believe it was Jacob Brannenberger, if I’m not mistaken, was also, I think maybe he was from France. I’m not even sure. But I don’t believe he, I think he joined the Amish, maybe. So the Brannenberger name and the Stary name are both relatively new blood in the Amish names. They were back from the 1800s. Why would I say new? But I guess the Amish started back in 1693 when the split began.
That being said, my grandpa Stary moved from Allen County, Indiana. He grew up in Allen County, Indiana. My dad was born in Allen County, Indiana until he was like seven years old. They moved to Michigan, Camden, Michigan. My dad grew up there and got married there. I was born there, grew up there until I was 17 or 18, I think. Then we moved to Missouri. My growing-up years were good. I had a lot of good memories, but there was always strife in the church and there were always differences of opinions and a lot of things that I didn’t understand, but I always still believed that the Amish were right. I just believed that it was just a matter of deciding which church was the right church.
So my school years were all in Camden, Michigan, and as I grew up, as I became a teenager, I fell into this sin of sexual immorality, and that had a grip on my life for many years, and also into the youth, into the sin of tobacco and drinking, not too much of that but still a decent amount of that as we, you know, as I grew up in my teenage years. And then when I was 18, that was before we moved. We actually moved when I was 19. When I was 18, I started dating my wife, who was a neighbor in the community that I grew up in.
Then in the spring of 2007, I would have been 19 that year. My parents decided to move because of issues in the church. That’s when we moved to Greentop, Missouri. That was another Amish community that was started by a bishop and some people from Allen County, Indiana, which was the original community that my grandpa Stary had moved from in 1969 to Camden, Michigan.
Also, on my mom’s side, I didn’t share. My mom’s side would have been, her maiden name would have been Iker, and her mom’s name would have been Graber. So I had Iker and Graber on my mom’s side, Stary and Brandenburg on my dad’s side. They also would have migrated from Allen County.
Then we moved to Missouri. I lived there from March, I believe, of 2007 until September of 2008. My wife and I got married. I moved back to Michigan and we lived there, started our young married life there in 2008. In the meantime, my parents were also not happy in Greentop, so they ended up moving back to Michigan in 2009 and rented a place in Quincy, Michigan because there was a bishop from that community that was also looking to start another community. In the spring of 2010, my parents and this bishop and a couple ministers from Quincy started another community, which was North Adams, Michigan. When I talk about North Adams, Michigan, Camden, Michigan, Athens, Michigan, they’re all relatively in, you know, within about 50 miles of one another, so 50 to 60. They moved over there, started that community in the spring of 2010.
I was still living in Camden, Michigan, the original community that we grew up in. In 2014, we had some issues with the church that we were living in in Camden. Also, my parents were very opposed to us living in Camden because they believed that it was wrong the way that the church was operated and the way things went. So we had some pressure from that. In 2014, we had some things happen in that church that we couldn’t support, so we moved to North Adams. But things already there were not going well by the time we moved there in the spring of 2014.
We bought a piece of property, built some buildings, moved in, and hoped that things would go better, and things did not go better. We lived there for not even one year. Maybe we moved there in May of 2014, and we moved back out in June of 2015, so it might have, it was a little over a year. From there, we were not knowing what we were going to do, where we were going to go, and we regrouped. Several of us, we had what they call Fremdean. I think everybody that was Amish knows what that means.
Things did not plan out, and we decided to regroup, start another community. This was in the spring of 2015, which is when Athens, Michigan was born. That’s where we were until August of last year. We moved there, and we thought that this time we would get things right, and we would use the Bible. My dad was more, at that point in life, my dad, well, he was like that growing up more as well, but he had gotten to the point where he didn’t want to have, you know, too many just traditional guidelines, but use the Bible more for our guidance.
But that didn’t really go too well. At that point, I wasn’t really interested in that. I thought that we as Amish still needed to have our guidelines, you know, the way the Amish did, because if we didn’t, then what was going to hold people together and how were we going to enforce things? So we moved, we had some disagreements on how to write up for an ordnung, but we did get through with that. We got done with that, but things went well for about five years, probably. Then, then about that time in life, my uncle Dan.
Steering, which also lives out here in Montana, where we live, left the Amish, which really put a shockwave through the community. And I, at that point, was very much opposed to what they were doing. I believe what they were doing was wrong. I knew that; I always believed that the Amish were something that I would always be a part of. They were one of the only people and places, you know, or cultures that were right. And so I believed that they were wrong, but yet I struggled with the fact that the day that we excommunicated them, I felt emotional and I struggled with it. I believed we were doing the right thing, but yet it bothered me. It really bothered me. It’s probably the first time that excommunicating someone really, really touched me emotionally.
And so I, but before this, I’m going to say in, after we were married, I don’t remember the year, but I started digging into our Anabaptist history. So I started reading some of Ben Blank’s books, like The Amazing Story of the Yellow Splint, A Resurrection, Reformation Beyond. And I was just, it was very interesting. And at that point, I believe I was only wanting to know where our Anabaptist, where our history come from. Not that I believed that there was anything wrong with our culture. It was just, it was just that I wanted to know where we came from.
And so after that, I think it was in the budget or something that came through mail, a magazine or something came through mail. I got this little flyer that had on it about the called The Crossbearer Series. And I think many of you probably know what I’m talking about. Andrew St. Marie wrote those books about Jacob Ammon, Connor Dribble, and Michael Sattler, I believe it was. And then I remember seeing this flyer laying on the floor and I was like, well, I want to order those books. So I’m going to have to save that flyer.
And I think through that is when I found out about some of David Brousseau’s books. So once I started reading into our culture, you know, kind of what we, what they believed and how they lived, I was, I started being challenged in understanding and seeing that they did practice what the Bible, they used the Bible for their guidelines. I’m not saying that there weren’t mistakes made, but that their hearts were to follow the Bible and not just the commandments of men.
And so as we, as I, as I continued, as we continued our journey, my uncle Dan got excommunicated and we started kind of, we struggled with that, but yet we thought it was the right thing. Things went okay for about another year. And then I really started digging in more to, after I read some of Andrew’s books, I started, I found out about David Brousseau’s books. And then the two books that probably changed my life the most, where I ultimately, I believe it helped me find Christ, was this book. I don’t know if you guys can see it. It was a book that, maybe it’s blurry, it wasn’t. But it’s called Secrets to the Kingdom Life. It’s written by David Brousseau. And also this book by Andrew St. Marie, it’s called Walking in the Resurrection.
And this, The Walking in the Resurrection is the Schleitheim Confession of Faith. So it’s the nine articles of faith that were written up, I believe, in 1527 in Schleitheim, Switzerland by Michael Sattler and a group of people. And when I read that book, it really, especially The Walking in the Resurrection, reading that book, when I started seeing what the early church actually believed about excommunication, I started seeing it was convicted that we were wrong in how we applied it. And it was very clear because it was backed up with Scripture.
And so the more I read that, the more I was convicted, and the more I believe that the Lord showed me. And so ultimately, I believe it was in the spring of 2022, I was in the bedroom one day and I, this, I believe I was listening to the message that David Brousseau had on salvation and knowing how the early Christians believed about salvation and knowing that my sins can be forgiven, that my past sins can be forgiven, they can be washed and blotted out and I can, they can be made white as snow. And I remember that thought coming to me. It was a new thought to me and I, I did not, it had never really occurred to me that, that it was something that I knew I could believe and that I knew to be true. Even though growing up, I always believed that God would forgive, but I didn’t really know exactly how I knew when and for sure. So that was a new thought for me.
And it was, I believe ultimately that at that point that I, that Christ came in and came into my heart and I understood what salvation actually was because after that, I was reading the book Secrets of the Kingdom Life at that time. And I became really convicted about things in my life, such as gossip and foul language and just simple things like that. I call them simple things, but I didn’t mean it’s just things in my life that were just commonly kind of accepted. And they just fell away. Like I was convicted and they fell away and they were not a part of my life anymore.
And so it was from there on, my life continued to change and I started seeing ourselves become distant, disconnected from the Amish church that we were a part of. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t know exactly what to do about it, but I knew that it was coming. I could feel it. I could sense it. We started reading our Bible in English as well and started just seeing that it was not, we were not applying a lot of things correctly.
And so ultimately, we were just staying undercover, trying to do our thing, be Amish, and still, you know, being convicted about certain things and just being quiet as much as we could. So then we, it got to the point where in 2022, we had some issues with finding a teacher, and that’s kind of a long story, but just to make it short, I ended up going in, my wife and I, I did for the most part, but my wife helped me and my nephew went in and we taught school for one year in the year of 2022 and the spring of 2023.
So at this point, I was just being quiet. We weren’t seeing much. I would talk to some of my friends, my family that, not my immediate family, I could talk to them, but I’m talking about like my wife’s family, some two sisters and brother-in-laws that we were close to. I would talk to them, you know, as much as I trusted, but I could only push that so far and then I would just let go. But we, we had a good year teaching school that year and they wanted us to teach again the next year.
In 2023, things were getting heated. Things were getting tense and I, I knew that it wouldn’t be too long until we would probably be found out and ultimately excommunicated. So I told them that no, it’s probably not going to work. And I would have loved to, I enjoyed it. At this point, my family was all kind of in agreement on the whole thing. What, you know, as far as what was right, what was wrong in the church. But I just remember that I, I did, I did struggle a lot with the thought of being excommunicated because of, I had this deep burden. I still carry that burden for my children.
I was like, my wife and I, we can see what’s wrong. We, we know, you know, when we, if we step away from it, we know what we stepped away from. But what about our children? If we make a decision, ultimately it’s going to affect them. And where do we go? How do we know where to go? And I would go and, you know, I would just go into their bedroom sometime at night and cry. It was heavy on my heart. I didn’t know where, what to do about it. I just wanted the Lord to guide us, direct us, and to take us where he wanted us. And that was ultimately our heart was to, you know, walk with the Lord and know that we were walking with the Lord and find that peace.
And so, yeah, it was once we got excommunicated, well then, so then the, finally it came down in August of 2023, the ministry wanted to come around. They wanted to talk about some things about our ordination. And we told them that we had some questions about the articles of faith that we, that we grew up with. We said, if we can’t agree with that, then talking about our ordination was not going to change anything. And they didn’t really, they weren’t really interested in talking about our, about the Bible or the articles of faith. They said that that was not the focus. The focus was to talk about our ordination.
And so my dad actually challenged them with the doctrine confessions of faith about Article 6, which talks about repentance and amendment of life. And it talks, it’s very clear in there, in Article 6 about that if we do not repent and we do not turn away, that going to church or baptism or any other external sacrifice will help us nothing.
And also Article 16, I believe, it talks about excommunication and it was very clear in there on excommunication, as I had shared earlier, on what, how I became convicted on excommunication. According to the article, I became convicted and aware that in there the excommunication was not applicable unless people were born again believers. And then it was also only applicable to a person that was born again, that was a believer and had fellowship with the saints, had held communion with the saints and had backed away. And it was not. So the realization hit me that we were a bunch of unbelievers excommunicating more unbelievers, so I didn’t understand how God was even involved in any of it.
And then, so my dad challenged them with that when they wanted to come; they weren’t interested. But they did come around that Saturday before church. They came to our house, the bishop and all the ministry. And so I tried to share a little bit what I could on why we believed what we believed and what the Bible says about being born again and of water and spirit because I was challenged when my uncle Dan left. He asked me what that meant. He said, we know what the water part is, but what does it mean about spirit? And I was like, well, I don’t know. Good question. So I was at that point open and that stayed with me for quite a while, you know, just pondering that. What does it mean? It says we are to be born again in water and of spirit. So when they came, I asked the ministry that. I said, I said, what does that mean? And then the bishop told me, well, that means he said it in German, but he said that means the Holy Spirit, right? I said, yeah, that’s what I would believe. And then he looked at me kind of sharply and he was like, do you understand that? I said, well, that’s our heart. That’s our desire is to understand that and to walk in that or whatever. And so we talked about some different things.
And he said, well, today we’re not here to talk about the scripture. We’re here to talk about our ordnung. And he said, that’s what we talk about on Sunday. He said, the scripture is so holy that we need people to, what they would, they would ask a testimony time where we would call it signus. After the sermon, he said, it’s so holy that that’s why we ask signus. And he said, if you guys aren’t there, why, how, how do you, how are you going to hear it? And so I was, and coming to that, I actually should step back just a little bit and fill in, I missed a part. So this was in August of 2023. In the spring of 2023, we had already been, you know, we were hiding and laying low and just keeping quiet. But in the spring of 2023, we had actually been out, my brother Stephen and his family and my wife and my family had been out east. We went on vacation, but ultimately the reason for that trip was because I had started listening to some of David Bercot’s messages about the early Christians. I was reading some of his books, and then I read some material and then, so I wanted to meet David and he was busy, and it was, and then I ended up finding an email or something because at this point I had a tablet. I did have some technology and I emailed them and asked when I could meet, and we made out a time that we could actually meet.
And while we were out there, we actually went there for church that Sunday. That’s when I met Elam, brother Elam Peachy. And so it was very interesting. That was our first time to a church that was not Amish, and we were still Amish. We were still in good standing at that time. We were not excommunicated. And so that was very, that was quite a step for us to even consider that. But then coming home from that, then some of my brothers, my family knew about it, but they weren’t saying, they weren’t going to say anything. But then some of my brothers were also not happy and my dad, they weren’t happy with where they were at in the church, but ultimately they thought that we were, might be leaving the Amish at that time. We did not have made up our mind exactly where we were going. We didn’t know, but we could see that it was definitely heading that direction.
And so I told my brother one day, he was like, well, are you then just done with the Amish? Are you just leaving? I said, well, I don’t know. I mean, it’s not right. I, we can’t continue how we are. I don’t, I wasn’t sure where it was ending up or where it was going at that point, but it was definitely heading that direction. And he said, what would you be open to go with us to visit another church? I said, sure. Yeah, I can ask my wife, but I don’t think that we would be opposed at that point. They wanted to go visit a church in Colorado and I can’t say the name. It was more Southern, Cotopaxi, Colorado. And there was, so there was this Amish church there, but they, you know, they were all, all but not Amish more or less. And so, and we were like, I told my brother, I said, if you want to, I said then make it, if you believe that God is calling you to go, then go. Just move ahead with it and do it.
We called a driver, found some vans. It all fell together. And I don’t know, it was a couple of days later, I think, we were heading to Colorado. We went to that church and came back. And then I think we went to another church before that or after that. I’m not exactly sure, but long story short, we weren’t attending our own church much at that point. And so they were not liking that as well. So by the time that they came to our house in August of 2023, they had told us that after they had talked to us for a while, the bishop said, well, I think we’ve heard what we need to hear. I think we can see where this is all going. He was scared with the mindset that I had. And to this day, I was not upset. I was not mean. I knew that they wouldn’t agree with it, but yet I tried to share a little the best that I could. And it was not received at all.
And so one of the ministers asked me if I was in agreement with a 1955 writing where all the, they called it a bischlitz, where all the churches got together and it had to do with excommunication. And I said, why? I wasn’t. I, no, I don’t. I said, I don’t have one. I have not read one. He said, well, you’ve had quite a lot to say today to think that you don’t, you don’t even know what’s wrote on in that letter. And I was like, well, I’m sure that maybe there’s some good things on it, but I’m not sure what the people done before 1955, before they had that letter. I mean, they had the Bible, and I believe they got along fine. So, but yeah, those were the types of things that they really, you know, held themselves on. But anyhow, ultimately they said, they told us that day that if we weren’t in church the next day that our things would be finished.
So we spent the next day together with my family, we did with two of my brothers and just spending time reading the Bible and expecting to be excommunicated, which we ultimately were that day. My dad and mom, not my mom, my dad and five of us brothers and our wives were excommunicated. And so we knew that we weren’t going back. And so ultimately from that point on, there were, the rest, my mom and then my younger brother, his wife and my sisters at home got excommunicated throughout the process of, we got excommunicated, I believe it was in the end of August. And by March of the following year of 2024, I think everybody else was excommunicated, including my wife’s oldest sister and her family because there were some children from their family that married into my family. And so that brought them into the mix. They weren’t going to shun their children. And so, and also my sister that was dating their boy. And so they ultimately got excommunicated as well.
And then, so now after we got excommunicated, we were like, where do we go? What do we do? It just felt like the walls had fallen away. Like, even though I knew it wasn’t right, but yet it was what we knew. It was what we grew up with. It was what was dear to us. It was, it was near to my heart. It was, it wasn’t that a lot of people, and I think maybe that is the mistake that is made sometimes, you know, we were always taught, told that the Amish people or that the ex-Amish people were always pointed to the people that go because they’re just rebellious. You know, that are, that might still be in the flesh wanting to have fun, wanting to go experience the world. And so we’re always, we’re always presented with those examples.
And so I did, and that was another thing that happened in my, to anybody out there that has afraid of reaching out. I’d had afraid to reach out to anybody ex-Amish because I believed and felt that they would just tell me to leave the Amish, that I would just get a biased opinion.
And so I just want to assure you that there are people out there that hella hard for the Amish. There are people out there that are not out there just to, uh, just to live life. They’re out there for Christ and that their heart is not to tell you to leave the Amish, but to point you to Christ.
So then after we were excommunicated, we were like, okay, where do we go? What do we do? The walls fell away. They were stripped from us. We were now shunned. And then I found the lessons and preaching that Ephraim shared earlier in this Hope for Wondering Amish. Um, you know, now you’re excommunicated. Where do we go? What do we do? You know, it’s, it’s a, and people think that you leave for pleasure and for, uh, just because you want more material things and that’s not how it is. Yeah, we lost convictions on some material things, but I could have cared less if I drove a vehicle or not. That was not in my life at all. I, it became the practical thing to do, and we lost convictions on it being wrong or not, you know, not biblical or whatever against the Bible.
But I, I just wanted to share that, that if there’s people that are wanting to know that there are people that are not Amish that have a heart for the Amish and are not just there to, to bash them or tell them how wrong they are, even though there are things that are wrong, but that’s not the heart. Their heart is not to tell them how wrong they are, but to point them to Christ.
So we were wondering where, where are we going to go? What are we going to do? And I told my wife, well, now that we can, because we had attended a church singing in Allen County, ACCF, Allen County Christian Fellowship, before we were excommunicated. This was not too long before we were excommunicated. We went down there, we snuck. Nobody knew; my mom knew and some of my family, but the church obviously didn’t know. And that was also a big stretch because these people were excommunicated.
And so we were, I told my wife, now that we can, I said, I want to go visit churches. I want to go see what church life is about, what it’s like, how it works, how they function, how it operates. And so we started attending Allen County Christian Fellowship quite regularly. And most of my family started attending a church that was in affiliation with the church in Cotapec, Colorado, which was in Holmes County, Ohio. There was an Amish bishop there by the name of Norman Yoder. And so they started attending there.
But my wife and I, we felt that they were spiritual, they were following the Lord, they were walking by the word of God, but that we felt that they were more kind of the same place that we were in. And we felt like, why walk through the same things that everybody has walked through if there are people that can give us direction and advice? So we felt called a different direction a little bit at that time.
And so ultimately through a series of events, we ended up visiting this church out here because my uncle was out here. We knew about it, and their pastor had visited at our house. And we also went to another church in Shipshewana several times and we visited the church one time with some people from Allen County up in Millington, Michigan, which had just kind of left the Amish a year or so before that. Um, Nathan, Nathan Miller, I think was the guy’s name who would have been Omer Miller’s son, if I’m not mistaken. So we visited that church and we really enjoyed it.
The more we visited, the more we knew that we wanted to be a part of something and we wanted to grow. That was our heart was to belong and to grow. And we ultimately decided to move in the spring of 24, move out here, which was not in our schedule at all in life. It was where God called us. Um, and so in August of 24, we moved out here and it has been a great blessing. It has helped us to grow. It has helped us to just have people that care, you know, around you that walk with you and encourage you.
And so it’s, that has really helped us. And then my wife gave her heart to Christ in October of last year, um, and so, which was a great blessing. And then in this spring, we came, we were both, my wife was really strongly convicted that she was not baptized unto Christ. She was baptized into the church. I was as well, but it wasn’t as big a deal to me at that point. I felt like I had other things to work through, but then we talked about it and we talked to our pastor about it and he was like, well, it was up to us and whenever we felt like we believed that we should or it had to be something that we were convicted of. That wasn’t something that was forced on anyone.
And so I had a struggle the day before we got baptized because I believe that God used that to make it real to me because the more that I struggled about some things in life, just in general about knowing for sure, because I couldn’t point to a specific, the biggest thing that bothered me was because I couldn’t remember and point to a specific day and hour that I just had a light bulb experience. Like, I struggled with that.
And so I shared that with my pastor and they encouraged me to just, that if I had a clear conscience to just walk by faith, and they shared some scripture and it really encouraged us. And what was interesting, the more that I struggled with it, the more it became real to me and the more I wanted it. And so I believe that the Lord used that to show me, and the reason I wanted it to be real, I was like, I was already sprinkled one time, and I needed, I wanted this to be real. I wanted this to be, I wanted to feel it. I wanted to know. I wanted to, it wasn’t just something that I wanted to do because it’s just protocol or it’s just what we do.
So in March of this year, we were baptized. And so it’s been a blessing. It’s been quite a journey, and we’re still learning. We’re still in the process of wanting to grow deeper and to continue on it being a blessing.
So one thing that I want to share as I wrap up is that one verse that really stood out to me as we were growing up is, you know, people, we talked about salvation. We talked about being saved, that we could not really know if we were saved or not. And I run across this verse, and I’ll share this verse. It’s in 1 John 5, verse 13.
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he will hear us.
And I was like, wow, that says that we may know. I was like, well, I got to read this in German. I got to see if the German Bible reads like this. So I read it in the German Bible, and it read the same. So I was like, what are we doing with these verses? What are we doing with scripture? It’s not that the English Bible isn’t reading it differently. It’s just, we’re just, I don’t know, understanding it more clearly, maybe. So I found that interesting.
And also, I wanted to share that people that, like David Bercot, I’m sure a lot of people have other authors as well that write books. I just think we should remember them and bless them for their work because they do a work in people’s lives. Those books that I read really helped me. They encouraged me. Ultimately, I believe, helped me find Christ.
And so I’m not wanting to promote that outside of scripture. I believe that scriptures are our final authority, but I believe that there are people that can give some insight and encouragement. And one reason that I felt safe, so to speak, to read David’s books was because he did not have any Amish background. And yet I found that he understood a lot of the things that we believed and understood. So it was just encouraging. It was like somebody that I trusted to listen to or read books from because he seemed to have the same values. But yet I believe that because he was not Amish, he wasn’t, in my mind, he wasn’t biased.
So I just wanted to encourage people that write books that you never know who will read them and what change it could bring into their hearts. So with that, I think that concludes where we’re at. Our story is still being written and may God have the glory and I’ll turn the time back over to Brother Ephraim.
All right, thank you so much, Michael. I really, really enjoyed hearing your testimony and about your walk of life and everything that you shared. In a lot of ways, it would parallel our own experiences.
And I think the other Amish ex-Amish on here this morning and that will listen to it later will be encouraged. And that’s our goal for Hope for Wandering Amish is to encourage each other in our walk in life, in seeking Jesus and becoming, being His disciples, walking a walk that’s clear where there’s no doubt, confusion, where we know Him, we know Him as our teacher, as our Lord. Our vision on Hope for Wandering Amish is not to encourage people in a rejection of the Amish, their culture, the things they stand for. There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of precepts that they have held on to that most of the churches in the day and age we live in haven’t. But our goal is to encourage folks to latch on to Christ and to embrace the light and walk in the light. And then if you find yourself in a church that doesn’t appreciate your genuine walk with Christ, then you’ll probably be forced to find another church. And our encouragement, our goal is to help those kinds of people to find a church that really is walking with Christ in the historic faith. And we are blessed with many churches across the country and across the world that are seeking a genuine walk with the Lord Jesus.
You mentioned Scroll Publishing, David Brousseau, and now several of them are publishing; I’ll put a plug in for that as well. Those were authors and bookstores that really encouraged and blessed and helped me in my own searching years of wrestling, and I still enjoy reading those books and being encouraged. And the walk isn’t over, you know. As long as we’re living this life, we’re to be continuing to sit at the feet of Jesus and learning of Him. We never get done. I think too many times people, you know, they have a crisis moment, maybe the light comes on, they realize what the true faith is, and they reach out for it, and maybe they genuinely receive it, make changes, whatever, and then I think the temptation is to feel like, okay, now we have it, and you start cooling off, and we quit learning and being encouraged, and we can cool off. And that’s why so many people have a good start, but years down the road, you wonder what happened. They’re not on the straight and narrow way anymore. So, yeah, our encouragement is to keep our eyes on Jesus and walk in the light and pursue the light. You know, it’s so… the whole reactionary thing can be so powerful. If we look back at the darkness and react to it and run from it, it’s not going to work out well. You try to run from something that’s trying to get you or something that’s, you know, something that’s dark, something that’s bad. You look back and run away from it, you’re going to stumble and fall. You can have your eyes on Jesus and then run to Him. So, just really encouraged by this morning. Thank you again, Michael.
I’d like to open it up if there’s anybody else that has anything to add, questions, whatever you might have, just a word of blessing. I want to open it up and give you a chance to do that. Well, brother Michael, I just wanted to say thank you for getting up early in the morning. I mean, you’re like in Montana. What time is it at your house right now? About 4:45. Okay, yeah, thanks for the sacrifice you put into this. Pardon me? I said it’s okay. Okay, all right. Yeah, I was definitely blessed and encouraged by your testimony. And I don’t know, there’s a part you were sharing about the many different church starts you were part of growing up. You know, you’d try something, it would fail, you know, start another church community, it would fail.
Yeah, that actually touched my heart. And I had to think of the woman at the well where Jesus said he would give her living waters where she would not thirst again. And I know the world is full of people that are thirsting, they’re looking for things, but it’s found in Christ.
There’s the verse in John 7:37,
On that last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out,
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.”
So I guess that’s an invitation for the world that is hungry, thirsting. Jesus is offering that living waters, He’s offering that drink to come to Him. So thank you and blessings to you and your family. Thank you.
All right, yeah, thank you, Elam. Is there anyone else that would like to share something? Sure, I would. It was good hearing that testimony. It wasn’t, I would say it’s one that I’ve heard bits and pieces of in the past, not about Michael, but just about people who have gone through what he has. And some of it resonates with what I went through growing up Catholic. Some of the things that he said were very similar to what I was told. One, don’t worry about what the Bible says. You just come to church and we’ll tell you what it says. And I think Michael, you said something similar to that when you went to a bishop or something.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, he just said that that day that they came to talk to us, he said that we’re not here today to talk too much about the Bible. He said, we’re here today to talk about our ordinance or our rules that they enforced. And they also, another thing that I wanted to add was they were very strong.
On shunning. On that day, they asked us if, uh, social shunning. So if somebody was excommunicated, we were not to have anything to do with them socially. So when my uncle got excommunicated when he left in 2020, um, they started coming back and stopping by occasionally. And so that, uh, that day before we were excommunicated, they asked us if, um, if we agree with my uncle. Do you agree with your uncle? And I just kind of kept brushing it aside because I knew where it was going. And finally I, I told them, I said, I told our deacon, I said, I understand what you’re asking. You’re asking me if I’m agreeable with my uncle. That way you can just, uh, write it off as, well, yup, he’s a heretic. Yup, he’s lost. I said, I said, I don’t understand why we have to say that, well, we have Catholic theology, we have Mennonite theology, or we have Dan’s theology. Whatever you want to call it. I said, our focus is to serve Christ. We want to walk with Christ. We want to walk with according to his word. I said, I understand, I know where you’re getting from. And they didn’t really like that answer, but I, I knew that that’s where they were coming from. So yeah, it was very much like when, if somebody is excommunicated, you’re not supposed to let them in the house. You’re not supposed to give them anything to eat. You shouldn’t have much conversation with them. So the excommunication is being, uh, expelled out of the church, but you’re also to shun them for life. I mean, until they come back and repent according to the church.
Okay, yeah, that was one thing. And then, um, the other you mentioned about getting first, is my sound okay? I got my engine running so I can keep my computer charged.
Yeah, you’re coming through nice and clear, John. Keep going.
Okay. So, uh, you said at one point you said about getting, you know, you thought you needed to make some changes and you got some things cleaned up in your life. Uh, you stopped, uh, swearing and, uh, different things like that that you knew were, you knew were wrong, but you, uh, evidently weren’t trained that way or because I can remember doing that myself when I was a drunk. I mean, I knew about God, and I knew some of the things I was doing was bad and that, that was one of them that, uh, I came along and said, you know, I gotta, I gotta change this. It’s just not right.
Well, I had tried to change some of that stuff earlier in my life, but the only way that I knew how to do it was to just tell God, uh, more or less tell God what I was going to do. Um, like, uh, I would promise that I would quit, but then the next time something happened, I had no power. The difference was that once I was convicted and I saw the light or that I was, uh, that I was transformed, just being transformed was, I had power and I had victory and it was beautiful because I never had that before. So that was the difference. I was not raised, I was not raised to use foul language. I was not raised to, to, you know, and to be in sexual sin. Those were just things that came into my life as I grew up, you know, just not being, uh, you know, just being an Amish person, not a follower of Christ. So yeah, it was, uh, those, those are just things that I, that I noticed and experienced that were very beautiful and they became precious to me.
And I shared that, now that you say that, I shared that with my uncle. He’s still Amish, my dad’s younger brother. I shared with him a little bit the things that changed in my life that I was striving for and that I was wanting and that were, um, you know, that were real to me. And he was like, oh, well, I see. He said, well, no wonder the church is going how it is if that’s the kind of stuff that you are in. I was like, Paul, you’re not understanding. That is just base human nature. It’s not, in his mind, he was saying your church is going the way it is because I was sharing the things that I had, you know, that I wanted to change and that I thought needed to change in our hearts. And yeah, it was just interesting that he brought that point out. He didn’t see it the same, which they still don’t.
Okay. Um, now, uh, one of the reasons I’m here this morning is I saw your name and, uh, my, uh, I have two sons that married into the Steary family. Uh, and, uh, and I believe that we have on here, Alva Steary, who, uh, Alva and I have grandchildren, the same grandchildren. And I was just wondering, Alva, you, uh, do you have anything you’d like to say to this guy?
Hey, can you hear me now?
Yeah, I know I, I know, I know Alva. Yeah, I had a feeling that, uh, I was gonna hear a good testimony this morning. I know, uh, Michael, he’s had some, uh, rough road and I can say too that in our life, we had a rough road too.
It’s been 20 years ago since we left the Amish. I can say a lot of good things about the Amish, but there was still, it was just a cultural thing that something that we grew up with, and this is the way it always was. But when our life changed, it was a whole different picture. I know we were shunned, but the last, I know the last several years there, when my parents still lived, we had a good relationship together. But yeah, I was just, I was blessed by your testimony and I just, my heart is and my prayer is that you just, you keep moving forward, and it’s not like we have to continue going in the opposite side of the road where a lot of people, like you said, if they don’t have a strong faith in Christ, they, they go from one side of the road to the other side and yeah, they both end up in the ditch. So yeah, I was blessed this morning and John there, yeah, he’s a good fellow. And he wanted to ask me last night if I’m in relation to, if I know a Michael Steary. And I said, yeah, I know, I know who it is. And so, and then he sent me the link. So I was excited to be able to listen to you, so.
I see. I didn’t even know you were on, but yeah, when I seen your face, I was like, yeah, I know, I’ve had met you. And do you, do you attend there at Allen County or Concord?
We’re at Concord.
In Concord. Okay. So I was, I thought maybe, I knew I had met you before. And so you said that you’re, so you have children, so you and John have some children that are married then.
Yeah, yeah, my two daughters married John’s two sons. So that was pretty unique how that all worked out. It just seemed like it all came together just the way that God had intended for it.
So. I see. Yeah. John’s a blessing. I love him dearly, so.
Yeah, well, thanks for passing that link on, John. And I appreciate you, brother, coming on. How do you pronounce your first name?
Alva.
Alva. Well, I appreciate you coming on this morning.
Yeah, no problem.
Morning, Neil. Can you hear me?
Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. On Neil, right?
Yeah, you know me. Thank you for joining us this morning, brother.
You’re welcome. Michael, I appreciate your testimony. I come from a very different, I come from a very different route, but I love Jesus. Amen. And I was just looking at Luke 12:53, it says,
The father shall be divided against the son and the son against the father and the mother against the daughter, etc.
And that’s a hard thing, I’m sure. Fortunately, I haven’t had to go through that, but I can’t imagine. Jesus had warned us that it could be a hard way if we want to follow him.
Yep. Thank you for sharing with us.
You’re welcome.
Yeah, thank you, Neil. I enjoyed hearing from everybody. Is there anybody else that would like to say something? We’re almost at 7. We should end it here soon, but I don’t want to cut anybody off. Now is your last chance.
All right, well, thank you again, Michael. Thank you, everybody, for coming on. That was a blessing. Michael, would you end us in prayer this morning here?
Sure. Let’s pray. Dear Lord, we thank you for your love, for your goodness, for your mercy, for the blood, Lord, that you’ve shed, that still 2,000 some years later is still just as powerful as the day that you shed it on the cross. And we thank you for calling us out of this world and into the kingdom, Lord, and to be children of you and to have you as our Father and the place that we go to with our trials and struggles that we face, Lord, and the victories and praise and bless you, even in the times of trials and also in the time that we have victories, that we are walking in victory. So we just thank you for the brothers this morning that put this together. And I just pray, Lord, that this could be used for your glory and for your honor. And I just pray that as we part ways, we go about our day, Lord, that this day could be used to honor and glorify you, Lord, and that we can continue to grow and continue to walk in your truth and in your word and in righteousness. And I just ask that you’d bless each and every one and pray this in your holy Son, Jesus Christ’s name. Amen.
Behold the great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land.
So we see that the, uh, abomination of desolation, as it was first referred to in the book of Daniel, is really a reference to both in that time, it was referencing what was going to happen with Jerusalem, the destruction that was going to come upon them, but also, as Christ said, it’s going to apply again in the future. And of course, we see that the interpretation given by the early Christians, sometimes referred to as the "early church fathers," they understood the abomination of desolation to refer to a time when, in some way, the holy would be desecrated.
Now, looking back, we see in the book of Matthew where Jesus spoke of the abomination of desolation that Daniel spoke of. That is found in Matthew 24:15.
Matthew 24:15
When therefore ye shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let him that readeth understand.
So it was often interpreted that this abomination of desolation referred to something that would cause the holy things—I’m trying to avoid using the term "sacred" because it brings up so much of a connotation that we don’t necessarily want to work with—anyway, the holy things would be desecrated.
And we can even look at how some Jewish scholars understood this concept well before Christ. The actions of Antiochus Epiphanes, who came in and desecrated the temple, offered a pig upon the altar, set up the statue of Zeus in the temple, was considered an example of an abomination of desolation. That was how even prior to Christ, some understood this, but as we move forward, Christians understood Jerusalem’s destruction in 70 A.D. as a type of this abomination, a fulfillment of the prophecy that Jesus had given.
That event—they saw it connected to Daniel’s prophecy.
So what we have when we look at the abomination of desolation is a prophecy fulfilled in both the near term and a longer future context.
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