The Story of David Bercot

David Bercot shared his testimony of transitioning from being a devout Jehovah’s Witness elder to embracing Anabaptist beliefs. After questioning the doctrines of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, particularly following the failed prophecy of 1975, he began a long search for what he deemed God’s true church, exploring various Christian communities before discovering the Anabaptists. David’s journey included a deep dive into early Christian writings, leading to significant lifestyle changes and a commitment to principles like non-resistance and community stability.

Key Points: – David’s background as a Jehovah’s Witness elder. – The pivotal prophecy of 1975 prompted doubts about the Jehovah’s Witness faith. – His quest for the historical Christian faith through primary sources. – Discovery of Anabaptist teachings aligning more closely with early Christian beliefs. – Emphasis on community stability, family values, and adherence to biblical teachings. – Creation of Scroll Publishing to share his insights and resources.

Scripture References: None explicitly mentioned in the transcript.

Good afternoon, everyone. We’re happy to have David Bercot on this afternoon to have a talk. And we’ve learned a lot from his books, and he runs Squirrel Publishing, him and his wife. And having him as a church elder has been very great as well. So we’re happy to have him. He’s going to be sharing his testimony on his journey coming from the Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Anabaptists. So yeah, that’s his thing. And if you’re listening in, you can take notes. At the end, we’re going to have questions and answers, and David is going to be answering them. So we can just get started from there. Let’s pray.

Lord in heaven, thank you for this day. Thank you for David and help him to share, just bring everything together for honor and glory to your name, our great. It’s all in Jesus’ name. Amen.

And David, the time is yours.

Okay, well, I thought I would share this afternoon a little bit about my journey from Jehovah’s Witnesses to the Anabaptists. I grew up as a Jehovah’s Witness, both my wife and myself. And we were very devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. In fact, I was an elder in the church where I was, the Kingdom Hall. And I don’t think either one of us thought we would ever leave the Witnesses. I mean, we were certain this was the one true church. This was God’s people. God, we would have used the term Jehovah’s organization.

But in 1975, they had prophesied that the, not that Christ would necessarily return in 1975, but sometime around 1975. And so in 1976, it was obvious, okay, something is seriously wrong here that everything is going on as normal. Not only has Christ not returned, but I mean, nothing has even, you know, changed. And so I began wondering, you know, is it possible, something I had never hardly imagined, is it possible that this isn’t God’s one true church?

And I had never read the writings of the founder. Very few Jehovah’s Witnesses have. They just take the word of the Watchtower as to how the Witnesses got started. And we all heard that the founder, Charles Russell, had predicted that 1914, something dramatic was going to happen in 1914. And of course, World War I started, you know, and so it seemed like, wow, God must be with this person that he could make that kind of prediction or prophecy and it actually happened. But none of us had actually read his books. I mean, the average Jehovah’s Witness. But I happened to have them. My wife had been picking them up at used bookstores and garage sales and things like that, just to put on the shelf. I mean, we never opened them, but, you know, just kind of as an interesting historical thing, you know, here were his writings.

And so I thought, you know, I need to read what he really said. I need to go to the primary source, his actual writings, not what Jehovah’s Witnesses today say that he said, but what did he actually say? And so I read his books and I realized he was no doubt a very sincere man, Charles Russell, but he was a false prophet. I mean, he prophesied or predicted so many things that never happened. And he had prophesied that 1914, not that the world, you know, a world war would start, but rather that Christ would return, that the millennium would start. It’d be the end of all wars. That the earth would, you know, be turned into a paradise that the Old Testament people would be resurrected to the earth. You know, none of that happened.

So I realized, okay, you know, Jesus said, beware of false prophets. So I thought, okay, this is obviously not God’s one true church. And again, we didn’t use the word church, but I couldn’t believe Jesus, my Lord, would tell us beware of false prophets and then use a false prophet to restore his church. That couldn’t be. That just made no possible sense. So I resigned both as an elder and as a Jehovah’s Witness, and then my wife did shortly after that.

And yeah, we began a search from there. Where are God’s people today? And it was a long journey. I mean, 30 or more years from the time that we left before we finally began finding some answers. So after checking out a few churches and we were in a small town in East Texas, so there weren’t like a lot of choices around us. There were no Anabaptists anywhere near us. Well, at that time, yeah, there were no conservative Anabaptists in Texas at that time except for some of the Russian Mennonites way out in West Texas, which would have been like 500 miles or more away. And we didn’t really know much about them. I just heard about them in the newspaper, but they would have had services in German and that.

So we did find ourselves joined an evangelical church. It was like a Baptist church. It was called Westminster Bible Church. It was very closely tied in its teaching to Dallas Theological Seminary. Very big on dispensationalism, very big on once saved, always saved, or they called it unconditional eternal security. And other than that, they would have believed the same standard evangelical teachings. It was a nice group of people, wonderful pastor and his wife. I feel I owe my eternal life to them that they reached out to us when we were on a journey and didn’t, particularly me, I felt like I had kind of come to a dead end.

And so I will always be grateful for the role they played in helping me find my faith again and getting back on the road of following Jesus Christ. So we became members of the church. We were very active in the church. And I sometimes taught Sunday school and things. It did bother me the teaching of once saved, always saved, because when I read the Bible, I mean, that’s not what I see in the scriptures. But when I would talk to people about it, they would say, well, that’s just your Jehovah’s Witness background. You’re being influenced by that. And I thought that’s possible.

The other thing that really bothered me was how militaristic they were. Very, very pro-war, you know, pro-American, super patriotic. Jehovah’s Witnesses, they have a lot of false teachings, but they are correct on some very important things. And one of them is they teach that Christians should not go to war, should not be part of the military, and that Christians should not vote. They should stay out of politics.

So it was very hard for me being in a church where people were so politically active and very, you know, pro-war, I would have to say. I mean, you know, if a war occurred, they were going to be on the side of the United States being militarily strong. And, you know, Christians should go to war to defend their country and that sort of thing. And to me, it was the height of heresy for Christians to be killing each other. I mean, Paul said we shouldn’t take each other to court. And if that’s wrong, and he said it’s a whole defeat for the kingdom of God if we take one another to court, what about killing one another because our countries disagree?

I mean, the kingdom of God should be a worldwide thing that we’re all citizens of this same kingdom and that it doesn’t matter if our countries are at war. We as Christians aren’t. That’s what I believed and how I was taught. But again, you know, people said, well, that’s because of your Jehovah’s Witness background.

And so I did wonder, okay, I don’t want to be a maverick. If this is not what Christians believed in the beginning, I don’t want to stubbornly hold on to it. Well, as it turned out, a big turning point in my life, I occasionally would speak at churches about Jehovah’s Witnesses. You know, people, when they heard that I used to be one, they would often ask if I would come and give my testimony in their church. And the local Christian radio station asked me if they could interview me. They were real curious about this because at that time my wife and I were managing a non-profit Christian bookstore. And so they were interested in the bookstore and then they heard about our background.

So I was on the Christian radio station and you know, he asked me different questions. I, you know, shared a lot about our journey. And at the end of the broadcast, after I was finished, he stated, he said, this is a non-denominational Christian radio station. We normally do not try to say anything negative about any particular denomination. We try to just uphold the Christian faith and recognize our listeners come from many different denominations. But he said, the simple fact is Jehovah’s Witnesses have departed from the historic faith.

And then that’s how he concluded it. And then, you know, he and I chatted a few minutes after and then I drove home. And on my way home, I kept thinking about his words about the historic faith. And I thought, yes, that’s what I want to follow is the historic faith. But I’m not going to just take some preacher’s word for it or some commentary. I want to see for myself. You know, I’ve been misled once and I vowed I was not going to ever let myself be misled again by just taking someone’s word for what Christians originally believed.

I was going to go back to the primary sources, to the writings of the early Christians, and see what did they believe when they were just one generation or two from the apostles. Not that they couldn’t be wrong, but I wanted to see what was the historic faith. What did they believe in the beginning? So I ordered a set of the Antinicean Fathers, which are no longer in print. I mean, they’re available online digitally. You might see my set behind me way back there on the bookshelf. But I bought a set and then I set aside a year. I spent most of a year just reading. It’s 10 volumes. I wanted to see what did they believe. And particularly, I was curious about some of these questions on eternal security and war. Those would have been maybe the two biggest. Also, the idea that we’re saved by faith alone, that we can live a sinful life, but if we have truly been saved, that that will not affect our salvation. Disobedience to Christ will not affect our salvation if we have been truly saved. And again, I wasn’t seeing that in the scriptures. I saw that we can’t earn our salvation, but it seemed to me that Jesus made it very clear we had to obey him. We can’t obey him perfectly, but that he did expect some kind of obedient response if we truly accepted him as our Savior and believed in him as our Savior.

So anyway, well, yeah, I discovered in the early Christians, they definitely did not go to war. They didn’t get involved in politics. They did not believe once saved, always saved. And they did not believe that a faith alone may save you initially. I mean, you don’t have to earn your way into the kingdom, but that you do have to, Christ does expect an obedient response in our lives. So all of that was good. But then I saw all these other things I wasn’t expecting that weren’t on the plate at all. One of them was my profession as an attorney. I was at that point an attorney. After I left Jehovah’s Witnesses, I went to college and then law school and I saw not only did they not sue one another, but as Christians, they didn’t sue other people. And I realized they would not have approved of my profession. I didn’t do a lot of lawsuits. I was not a trial lawyer, but I did file a number of lawsuits here and there. And I realized, yeah, that is not pleasing to Christ that we get into litigation like that, even as an attorney, even if we aren’t personally involved. And so I realized, wow, I had some serious thinking to do about my whole life.

Also, there are strict teachings on entertainment. You know, we watched normal TV, nothing particularly bad, but, you know, we watched what, you know, the average worldly family would have watched. Also, there are teachings on modest dress. My wife didn’t normally dress really immodestly, but, you know, sometimes, again, she dressed kind of like people around her. She certainly wore slacks and pants, and, you know, I would go around in shorts and things. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, but she did wear makeup. And then I discovered the head covering, that 1 Corinthians 11. And, of course, everything I was discovering was in the Bible. It wasn’t like, oh, the early Christians said that, and that made it law. It was that all of this was in the Bible that I just had never taken seriously before.

So I sat down with my wife, and we also talked with the children, and I shared with them what I was discovering and that I didn’t feel, I felt like we had to make some major changes in our life to be pleasing to Christ. But I told the children, I said, anything like, you know, we decided to get rid of television. I said, whatever we give up, I’m going to make sure that we add even better things. So I had been really caught up in my law practice trying to get it off the ground, and so I worked long hours. Most evenings after supper, I would spend a little time with the family, and then I would go back to my law office and work. Most Saturdays, I worked all day Saturday. And so, you know, I told the family that was over forever. You know, I was going to be home at night. I would be home on Saturday, and I was no longer going to worry about trying to get rich in this world. That, you know, I was deeply convicted that that is not pleasing to God, to, you know, as Christians, that we are chasing riches, trying to get successful in this world.

So, yeah, my children, when anyone asked them, yeah, did it really, did you hate it when your dad got involved in all of this and, you know, you had to give up television and, you know, movies and things like that? And I remember my daughter, who would have been, I don’t know, about 10 at that time, she said, no, that’s when life really started getting fun in the family when dad got into all of this. So I was very glad, you know, that following Christ actually brought our family closer together. My wife and I made the decision, we’re going to go slow on this. We’re not going to just overnight radically change and maybe turn our children away from Christ or, you know, I didn’t want to turn my wife away. So we just went at a slow pace, one thing at a time.

And like I say, anything we gave up, I made sure that we, as a family, gained other things to make it better. But then, of course, the big question in my mind when I came to all these convictions, this meant I was living very differently from the other people in our church. We were still friends. We still kept going to the same church. Like I say, very nice people. I mean, I’m not going to judge where they are with Christ, but they were not living this kind of lifestyle. So I really began wondering, is there a church somewhere who still teaches these things today? I mean, Jehovah’s Witnesses taught some of them, but then a lot of them they didn’t, and then they had a lot of teachings that were definitely not the historic faith. So there was no question they were not the way, but yeah, was there something? And yeah, how do you, there was no internet then. This was the mid-1980s. So it’s like, where do you go? I mean, maybe there was an internet for the colleges or something, but the average person didn’t have it in their home.

So one of my motivations in writing the book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up, which talked about the early church, was I was hoping that, you know, if my journey was pleasing to Christ, that he would see to it that if there was a church out there that somehow the book would make it into their circles because I had no connections and no way to do this. So I wrote the book in faith, and, you know, we prayed to God that if there is any church out there that still teaches these things, that they will get in contact with me. Well, the book had not been out very long before I started hearing from the Anabaptists. I mean, so many letters, so many phone calls. I mean, it was overwhelming. And so, and then the group, the German Baptists, they contacted me. And so it was kind of exciting. Okay, there are still people who teach modest dress, who don’t go to war, who don’t sue people, who don’t get divorced. That was another one was divorce and remarriage. In our church, I mean, most of the young couples we knew ended up getting divorced and then later remarried. And the Bible teaches against it. The early Christians taught against it.

So, yeah, it was exciting to find out all of these things with the Anabaptists. Now, there were some doctrinal differences. They weren’t exactly the same, and there were all the cultural things. So there was quite a bridge to cross from even the changes we had made in our lives to fit into the Anabaptists. So it took us, wow, from the time we first heard from them to the time we joined them was 15 years. I mean, it was not an easy bridge to cross. There were legitimate biblical standards that, you know, we had no issue with. And then there were a lot of cultural standards that, yeah, were very hard. And so, you know, we kept checking, are there some other churches that we wouldn’t have to make all of these cultural changes? And, I mean, we looked and we looked, and we did hear from a lot of other churches. And, you know, we checked into them, but there would always be significant differences. There were very few other churches that did not go to war. I mean, the Anabaptists and the Brethren were pretty much it. We did contact the Quakers, but nowadays the Quakers are so incredibly liberal. Yeah, we couldn’t seriously look into them.

So, anyway, after trying just doing house church for a number of years, we did that for a long time, actually 10 years of having a small house church. After a while, we were meeting in a church building, but it finally kind of reached, I guess, the end of as far as it was going to go.

And so we finally decided, you know, let’s throw in our lot with the Anabaptists, that they’re not perfect, but they are the closest thing still around today as an established church that teaches very similarly to the early Christians upholding the historic faith, maybe not perfectly, but extremely close. And the other thing is they have 500 years of stability.

So when we had our house church there in Texas, we had some wonderful fellowships, some very happy times, but we saw so much instability and people, oh boy, coming and going and so many issues, often financial issues, economic instability, often marriage issues in families. And that’s fine when we’re reaching out, but these were people who were supposedly Christians. All of them were from evangelical backgrounds. They were not from plain backgrounds. But it was concerning, like you say, the family instability, the unwillingness to submit to church authority. That was something I guess I had grown up with, was used to as a Jehovah’s Witness, of being under church authority. And I saw that, man, there are thousands and thousands of people out there who are wanting to serve Christ, radical Christians, but they don’t want to come under church authority. And they’ll wander around and go from this church to that church and that sort of thing. And I saw, you know, this is maybe where we’re going to end up as a family. And who are our children going to marry? Who would want to marry into maybe instability?

So all of those factors came into play, and we finally decided, yeah, let’s throw in our lot with the Anabaptists. And unfortunately, in Texas, there were not very many choices. We looked into the Eastern Mennonite Church, and that was the closest church to us. Again, a great group of people, a wonderful bishop in the church there, but it would have been a very difficult fit. An awful lot of things we would have to change that were not biblical requirements. It was just part of their church’s Mennonite culture. And I’m not knocking that, that the culture has helped bring a lot of stability, but it does make it hard for people from the outside to fit in.

Also, they told me I would have to give up Scroll Publishing. I would not be allowed to have an independent publishing house. I understood that, but yeah, after thinking about it, we decided let’s move to Pennsylvania and we began attending Shippensburg Christian Fellowship, which was a lot easier fitting in there. They allowed me to continue on with Scroll Publishing. And now we are part of a sister church, Chambersburg Christian Fellowship. It was a mission outreach from Shippensburg Christian Fellowship. And yeah, that’s where we attend church now.

And let’s say, I appreciate the stability that the Anabaptists bring. I appreciate the stable families. When you’re dealing with people from evangelical backgrounds, you are dealing with so many family problems, marriages on the verge of breaking, families that are already broken apart and that. And to me, it was such a blessing to sit in church and to see families. I knew they weren’t perfect, but they had happy marriages, children who were happy. Again, I realized, you know, even as conservative Anabaptists, we’re not perfect. Everything isn’t just exactly the way it should be. But it was so nice to see godly families who were stable, who were happy. You didn’t have to worry about two years from now they were gonna get a divorce.

We’re, like I say, most of our friends back in the Bible church we had been are now divorced and remarried. And these were people we were good friends with. It really hurts to see that happen. And of course, it’s very displeasing to Christ. It hurts Christ, which is far more important.

So anyway, that’s just in a nutshell, kind of our journey into the Anabaptist world. So maybe I, some of you listening might have some questions about it. I see some people, I know that I see your names up there. I appreciate you sitting in and then other people maybe I don’t know, you might have questions about my journey or anything connected with it.

All right, David, that was very good. I didn’t expect you to stop that soon and I was looking on eight books. There’s a set of Ante-Nicene Fathers on there right now for $1,471. So it’s getting expensive.

Yes, they’re very expensive now because they’re out of print.

Yeah. Well, thanks so much for sharing. If there’s anybody on here that wants to ask him a question, go ahead and unmute yourselves and ask him the question.

Yeah, David, thank you so much for sharing here this afternoon. It was just a real blessing hearing your journey again. And I’ve heard it before, and I never get tired of hearing your story. If I’m not mistaken, you just passed the 21-year mark when you moved to Pennsylvania here. And it’s been a blessing having you around.

If you don’t mind, maybe you could just take a minute and just explain to everyone what Scroll Publishing is and what you offer as far as resources. That would just be a blessing if you could share that.

Sure. So Scroll Publishing started with friends in our church. After I’d read the early Christians and shared with Deborah, I discovered all these exciting things. At that time, I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I mean, it seemed like, well, there’s nobody who lives like this now. So yeah, what am I gonna do? But it was all exciting because I saw that it was just the New Testament, just taking the New Testament literally, was basically what it amounted to.

And so it wasn’t something I felt like I could ignore. I wasn’t going to try to cram it down other people’s throats, but I thought I would just share with people. So I invited a group of friends there at our church, some young couples that we got with, you know, every week, we used to get together, had supper together, played board games or things like that. So I told them, hey, I’d like to share with you what I’ve been learning. And they were all interested in hearing.

So we got together, I think it was on a Saturday night, and I just shared some of the stuff that I had learned that to me was sort of amazing, like about the head covering maybe and some things like that. And that, yeah, they didn’t teach that it’s once saved, always saved. Now, these people, our friends were people who were kind of seekers themselves, thinkers, and they didn’t necessarily just go along with everything our church said just because the church said it. You know, they questioned some of these teachings themselves.

And so they were real, you know, a lot of it. Yeah, they found very comforting that, okay, what they had kind of figured from the New Testament, yeah, was correct. Other things, you know, yeah, they thought their teaching on divorce and remarriage was way too strict. Yeah, there were a number of the teachings of the early church that they weren’t too excited about, but they were interested in hearing about it. So we maybe had a couple of those Saturday meetings and then we invited other, they wanted me to invite other people to the meetings.

And, you know, we’d sit around, people would ask questions, and some of the visitors, you know, would really be excited about what they would hear. Other ones, it really stepped on their toes. I remember one sister saying, boy, it sounds to me like the early Christians needed to read their Bibles more. And I said, well, they did read their Bibles. That’s the whole point. They’re just taking the Bible literally. But of course, it didn’t jive with evangelical doctrine on once saved, always saved and faith alone, you know, some things like that, that upset them.

But anyway, our friends, this group of friends that we’d had these different Saturday night meetings with, they said, David, you need to write a book about this. You know, you need to tell other people. And, you know, my first response was just to laugh it off because I was not an author. I never dreamed of being an author. I mean, that had never even crossed my mind. But I don’t know, after a while, it started weighing on my conscience. I remember talking to my wife, Deborah, and saying, you know, if I go to my grave and I never tell anyone about what I’ve seen, except just a few people, I wonder if I’m going to be blood guilty before Christ. You know, I can’t change what people believe, but it seems like I have an obligation before God that now that I have seen this, and this information is not widely available. I mean, it should be. It’s not like it’s some secret thing.

Now, it’s much more available now, you know, with the internet and, of course, Scroll Publishing has helped, but a lot of people nowadays are looking into the early church. But back then, it was very, very rare. And I thought, you know, I need to write and share some of this with people and then just leave it in God’s hands. But, you know, that’s all I can do, you know. And then if he wants to take it from there, fine. If somehow this isn’t something he wants broadcast, okay, it’s going to die there because no one has ever heard of me and I have no connections, no way to get this out.

Because of running a Christian bookstore, blessedly, my wife and I knew something about the Christian book industry, what we knew, you know, the size of books that people like to read, the distribution, how Christian books were distributed, some things like that that gave me the confidence to, you know, write a book. And so originally, the idea was for somebody, some other publishing company to publish the book. So after I wrote the manuscript and I paid a professional editor to work with me to edit it, to get it into good format that a book publisher would be willing to accept, I then sent it to three different Christian publishers that, from having been running this Christian bookstore, we had been managing it at this point for about five years. So I knew the publishers who were most apt to publish a book that stepped on a lot of toes, that went against maybe some of the general evangelical beliefs.

So Bethany House was one of the places I sent it. It was more of a holiness publisher, and so it would not have taught once saved, always saved, or it would not have taught easy believism. I sent one to, I think it was called Christian Books. It was Gene Edwards. Some of you may have read some of his books. He has a book called The Tale of Three Kings that is fairly widely read. I thought, he’s maybe a likely candidate. I forget who the third one was. Anyway, so I sent the manuscripts to those three publishers, and so I heard Gene Edwards called, and he was my favorite author at that time, and so it was really exciting to get a phone call from him. And he said, Man, this is a good book. He said, If you ever get this published, he said, Yeah, I would be interested in helping you distribute it. But he said, Yeah, right now we’ve got, we’re just a small publisher and we’ve already got a long list of books of our own that we want to get published that we don’t have the resources. So, yeah, we would not be able to do it. But he was very encouraging, and I appreciated that.

And then I heard back from Bethany House, and they said, Yeah, we would be interested in publishing this, but we would need you to make some changes. So they wanted me to take out some of the things that would be offensive to a lot of evangelicals. And boy, you know, I prayed about it, talked to my wife. It was exciting the thought of a fairly major Christian publisher like Bethany House. At that time, they were big. I have no idea if they’re even an independent publisher today. I don’t know. I haven’t followed Christian publishing that much. But at that time, they were a very popular publisher, you know, that they were interested in it. But on the other hand, you know, I thought, Boy, am I gonna compromise the whole point of this is to tell people what the early Christians believed. And so I decided not.

And then I told Debra, you know, what’s gonna happen is every publisher is it’s going to be the same way. They’re going to want me to change things. So, as I said, because of her experience with the Christian bookstore, I had enough confidence and knowledge to, hey, let’s just start our own little publishing house and print this ourselves and get it out and see what happens. I mean, I remember we talked about we may end up with a garage full of books, but at least, you know, I’ve done my part. And then it’s going to be up to God whether this goes any further. So that’s what we did. And that was the beginning of Scroll Publishing. And it’s still just a family-run nonprofit. I wasn’t doing it for money. I had my law practice, so it was always just something for ministry and still is.

And thankfully, God opened the door. And I mean, just no sooner did the book go out. We sent out 100 review copies to different Christian magazines, and only a few of them reviewed it. But one of them was Pathway Publishers that those of you who are ex-Amish, I’m sure are familiar with Pathway Publishers and the magazine Family Life. At that time, Elmo Stoll was the editor, and he gave a really nice review of the book, Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up? And so that is what opened the door with the Anabaptists. I didn’t really, it looked like some little rinky-dink magazine. I thought maybe it had a readership of 500 people or something. I had no idea that that book is read by so many Anabaptists. But yeah, that’s what really opened the door into the Anabaptist world and how most of them initially heard about it. And then it started spreading word of mouth from there.

And then we’ve had other books through the years, The Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs, that we didn’t actually print ourselves, but we’ve been a major distributor for it. But it’s a reference book that I put together. And then another book that’s been very popular with Anabaptists is The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down. And then most recently, I did a commentary on the book of Romans, what the early Christians believed about Romans, which fits very much what the original Anabaptists believed about Romans as well. And so that has been very well received. And in fact, this week, we got an order from Amazon. Every week, they order, give us a weekly order of books, different books that we publish that they order from us and then they sell on their website. And they ordered, I think it was like 830 copies of the Romans commentary, which was, and then they just ordered 200 the week before. So that’s over a thousand they’ve ordered in just a period of like eight days. So, and we don’t know who all these people are who are buying it from Amazon, but it’s kind of exciting that obviously somehow through word of mouth or other means, it’s getting known.

So yeah, it’s been exciting how God has used Scroll Publishing to get the message of the historic faith and the kingdom of God out. Yeah, thank you for that, David. That’s a blessing to hear that. And you’re sitting in the office where you do all your research, study, and writing. That’s exactly right, yeah. I’m pretty sure I have the settings here right as far as those of you in the audience here. Are you able to unmute yourself? Michael, I’m able to see you on the screen here. Are you able to unmute yourself? All right, it looks like we’re all good to go. Am I on or was there somebody else? It looks like, I think you’re good to go, Michael. Yes, I just wanted to tell David I appreciate hearing his testimony, his journey. We met up, I think it was in May of 2023. We had been out to Shippen, to Chambersburg. We were there for church. I don’t know if David remembers or not. Okay. I thought you looked familiar. I was trying to remember, yeah, yeah. I don’t look quite as Amish, but yeah, I have an Amish background. And your books have been a great inspiration to us in our spiritual journey. So yeah, the books that you wrote have helped us. And one reason I wanted to say that it has helped us was me coming from the Amish, I was really, I just had afraid that if I reached out to anybody that was not Amish, they would just tell me to leave the Amish. And so I didn’t, I was scared of that. And then when I started reading your books, and I think it might’ve been through Pathway Publishers that I started seeing some of the books that you wrote and like it would give the heading or the kind of the preface of the book. And so I started reading books. I was just, I was inspired that you didn’t have no Anabaptist background, but yet could understand where we came from because we had so many things in our background that were good, that were biblical, but they didn’t teach salvation. They did not teach, we didn’t have divorce and remarriage. Didn’t believe in going to war. All of those things. It had a lot of goodly morals, but not, but we didn’t have salvation. And so your book, The Secrets to the Kingdom Life, I believe is what ultimately brought me to understand salvation and come to Christ. So it was a truly a blessing. And I actually really enjoyed your podcast that you had with Leighton Flowers, Calvin here, I don’t know, a couple, a month ago, maybe. Yeah, a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And it’s just, so I, there’s, there’s been, it’s been a great blessing.

One thing, the question that I had when you were sharing your testimony was, did you ever, in your journey, did you ever think about the Amish or what would have directed you not to consider the Amish as part of the Anabaptist culture? What did you see? If you did think about the Amish, what did you see that would have made you, was it maybe just the cultural difference?

Yeah. Now, immediately after leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses and starting my search, the first thing I wanted to look into were the, what are sometimes called the historic peace churches. And so I knew about the Amish and Mennonites and the Brethren and the Quakers.

So I thought, OK, I’m going to check out those groups. Now, I didn’t realize there were a lot of flavors of Mennonites. See, there’s only one kind of Jehovah’s Witness. So I thought it was the same with other churches. So I didn’t realize. Now the Amish I didn’t consider. There were none in Texas that I knew of, and I knew about the horse and buggy and all of that. I just assumed they probably weren’t even interested in somebody who drove cars and all of that. So, no, I didn’t really give them serious consideration. But I knew enough history to know they were part of the Anabaptists. So, yeah, I did look into the Mennonites right away. I wrote them, but see, I wrote the general conference because I didn’t know there was anything else. So I heard back from the general conference, and they actually had a minister; they were trying to plant a church in Dallas, which was not very far from us. So we went there and visited him, and I thought, well, this represents all the Mennonites.

So, I had a conversation with him, and you know, I asked him about wars, you know, different things, and I was happy with his answers there. I think I asked him, did he believe in the inerrancy of the Bible? And he hedged on that one, and that bothered me. I asked him about what they believe about divorce and remarriage. I remember his answer, he said, uh, divorce is wrong, but, and then I forget, you know. I asked him about abortion. Oh, abortion is wrong, but, and everything, you know, oh, it’s wrong, but, you know, and I thought, I remember driving home from Dallas, my wife and I, and I said, I think we can cross them off the list. Yeah, I want a Christianity without a bunch of buts. I mean, if Christ said it, that’s what it means. It’s not, well, yeah, it’s wrong, but.

So, we thought we had looked into the Mennonites. So that, yeah, it took a long time before we found out that there were other kinds of Mennonites, and, you know, reconnected. It was a long time after that. The Quakers, I wrote them, got some literature from them. They invited us to their annual conference. And this was way back in the 1970s, and they were pushing gay marriage way back then. And so I looked at that and, OK, cross off the Quakers. And then the Brethren, again, I didn’t realize there were a bunch of different kinds of Brethren.

So if we had gotten hold of the German Baptists, it would have been good, but instead we got hold of the Grace Brethren, which came out of the German Baptist movement, but they are totally evangelical. I mean, they don’t hold to non-resistance or divorce and remarriage, none of that. They’ve left all of that. They’re just basically like the Baptists. And so, yeah, I remember sitting there with one minister from their church and asking him all these questions. And he’s like, wow, you guys go to war. So it looked like, wow, everybody has lost it, you know. And so it was pretty discouraging.

And that’s why we ended up in the evangelicals. It just looked like everyone had lost it. And then, like I say, when I read the early church, I thought, OK, no, this is the historic faith. So somewhere, surely, Christ has a church. It hasn’t disappeared, you know. And so it got us looking again. And I’m thankful for all of the shortcomings, like I say, that Anabaptists, we do have. We’re not perfect. I’ve often thought, if they had disappeared, I would have found nobody. I mean, it would have been like, there’s nobody. I mean, just scattered individuals. It would have been so discouraging. I mean, I would have just, I think, given up, you know.

So it was very encouraging that, OK, even before I joined them, that, OK, there is a group that still wears head coverings, that still does not go to war, that still believes in the permanence of marriage. And that meant a lot, knowing they were out there, even if I felt like, at that time, I couldn’t join them. Yeah, no, that was, it was, I was inspired by your testimony. As far as we did not experience that, like you came out of the Jehovah’s Witness and didn’t know where to go, right? You didn’t have, you were like, OK, where does God want us? Where are we going? Who do we talk to? Who do we reach out to?

When we were excommunicated out of the Amish, we had a lot of support from the ex-Amish, more Anabaptist-type circles, you know, that we could communicate with and had. So that was really a blessing for us. But yeah, that was great to hear you sharing, and thank you. Yeah, thank you. All right, I think Brandon was trying to say something earlier.

So sorry about that, Brandon. I see your last name is Stoll. It makes you wonder if you’re related to Elmo Stoll, whom David Brousseau was talking about earlier. Different spelling. Same original name, I’m guessing. No, I don’t think there’s any relation there. So I’m from the Hutterite Church, actually. Ah. Your books are all over and we appreciate them as well. I’ve just got a question on what do you do with the accusations that from Paul, Paul’s mentioning grievous wolves that come in, what do you do with the accusations that the early church are part of that group? I’ve got a pretty good answer, but I’m wondering what your answer is, how you defend early church Christians not being the dangerous wolves. And then on the other hand, how do you, what would be the issue from the Jehovah’s Witnesses view on the two kingdoms, or is it a two kingdom view as you would see it versus what you hold to now? Where’s the shortcoming in a two kingdom view amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses versus a two kingdom view that you fully see in being taught in Scripture? Do you get what I’m saying?

I do, yeah. So as far as, yeah, the early church, of course, you know, Jehovah’s Witnesses said, yeah, as soon as the apostles died, the church went astray. And when we were searching, you know, yeah, I read up on every kind of denomination there was. I mean, I went to the library, every book I could find about every group, you know, what did they believe? And so many, particularly the individual sects like Seventh-day Adventists and all that, almost every one of them, it was the same story. Oh, the church went astray as soon as the apostles died, which seemed odd to me. Jesus said, lo, I am with you all the days until the end. And that on this church I will build, on this rock, I will build my church. So, I mean, how could it just disappear? I mean, Paul said that there were going to be wolves come in, but he didn’t say the church would disappear. And yeah, reading the early Christian writings, it was obvious who the wolves were. Those were the Gnostics who tried to take over the church, and the church remained faithful against them.

But it would seem, when I went back to the New Testament and just seeing that everything the early Christians taught, I mean, it’s just the most literal reading of the New Testament on just about everything. But yeah, so I mean, the early church isn’t our foundation, it’s the New Testament. You know, what did the apostles teach? But like I say, wow, it really, their writings brought me back into the New Testament. Now, just when was it? Last week, I gave a message in our church, and it’s maybe by now posted on Sound Faith, on that whole accusation that the church went astray, you know, was already going astray before the apostles died. And you might find that interesting to watch at some point.

As far as Jehovah’s Witnesses, their problem is they hold to wrong views of the Trinity, wrong views about the resurrection of Christ, wrong views about heaven. Quite a lot of the 144,000, yeah, they have a lot of errors in their doctrines, plus the problem of all of their false prophecies. I will say on the two kingdoms, as far as I know, they have everything right on that. They don’t call it the two kingdoms, they call it neutrality. Then as Christians, we should be neutral as far as worldly affairs, worldly wars, worldly politics. We should be neutral. So they call it neutrality, they don’t call it the two kingdoms. But, yeah, they do good on that. On war, they don’t go to war. They’re very strict on, you know, being part of the military or the police. They will sue one another and they will practice self-defense if you break into their home or something like that. So they don’t have nonresistance quite as well as the Anabaptists do or the early Christians.

Yes, they’re better than, of course, most churches, but yeah, they’re a little short on some of the areas on non-resistance. Okay, do you think a new covenant versus the old covenant comes into play there, that they don’t draw a strict line, or what do you think is the reason to all that? No, they have a strict line between the old and the new. It’s just, the problem with Jehovah’s Witnesses and any cult or sect like that is whatever the guys at the top say, and there’s like ten, it varies; nine people on their governing body, whatever they say the New Testament means, that’s what it means. So if they say it’s okay to sue your neighbor, it’s okay to sue your neighbor. You don’t question it as a Jehovah’s Witness. If they say it’s okay to use self-defense, you don’t question it. Or like they swear oaths. Jesus said don’t swear oaths. They’ll swear oaths. They say, well, he didn’t mean you couldn’t do it in a courtroom. So the problem with a group like that is that you have to accept what they say over the exact words of Christ, which we should never be put into that kind of situation. We should be able to follow exactly what Jesus says, and that’s the problem when you have, you know, a sect like that who claim to hear directly from God. And so whatever they say, you cannot question. Right. All right, that’s good. Thanks. All right, is there anything else? We’re getting close to 5 o’clock. One, if not, I was thinking to ask you, Elam, to close us in prayer. We may have someone else here that wants to say something. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, David, John Higgins here. Oh, hi, John. Hi, I am very illiterate when it comes to computers, so I tried to do all this stuff. Well, now I’m back on my flip phone and things are working better. So, and then I hope we got a couple of, I don’t know, five minutes to let him respond to this, because it has to do with a question that, I don’t know, the Amish guy asked Michael. You know, when I went to, I used to live in Lancaster County, and people in my group that I was with were not too thrilled with when people asked the Amish in Lancaster County, what do I have to join? And they would say, don’t bother. Okay, that was the answer. And I didn’t feel good about it either. But after being Amish for three years and seeing what changes, and Dave, you talked about this, and changes that, let’s just say that you tried to eat things that the changes that must be made that don’t line up with your background or what you believe the Bible says about certain things. It’s really hard to take. I mean, a few of them are, but then as time goes on and more and more get piled up. So I know many people that have tried to be Amish and, you know, spiritual Amish, but after some of these things pile up, they finally leave. And I’ve known people that have been Amish 12 years, 17 years, one of them, and ended up leaving. I was only three. And the guy that was 17 said, be thankful it was only three. So what do we do with all that, David? It’s a, you know, it’s a good, we want to say it’s a good group. And yeah, it’s good for some people. And I hear what you’re saying about if you were raised that way, it’s fine. And you, you know, you’re okay with that. But somebody to come in from, you know, from the outside and join up and be a part. We had some good times there and some growing for sure, especially with my children. What do you do with all that? It’s just. Yeah, okay, so are you talking specifically about the old order Amish or just about Amish and Mennonites in general? I would say, yeah, I don’t want to say in general because some Mennonites you can join and be fine. And I don’t mean just Mennonites, but, you know, like you’re a part of, there’s a lot of, a lot of things there that have. and the Mennonite flavor in it, and the Anabaptist flavor, which, you know, I’ve been Anabaptist for almost 30 years now, and I wouldn’t be anything else. But just that what group path has changed that they’re not going to. What would you say to somebody that wants to join? You know, like the Lancaster Amish said, don’t bother, because you might try and you end up leaving. Yeah, I have found some seekers are drawn to plain, some aspects of plain culture. Now, I never was particularly, I’m saying like some people like the idea of getting off the grid and using horses instead of cars. Nothing wrong with that if, you know, nothing necessarily particularly godly about it either. I mean, to me, that’s just a cultural thing. Some people, yeah, are drawn to a stricter form of Mennonite. Most seekers are not. Most seekers, I would say, find it a hurdle. But yeah, if somebody likes that, then, you know, fine and good. The problem for, I’d say, most of us seekers is there’s usually, unless you live like in Pennsylvania or Holmes County or something like that, typically there’s only one choice, maybe two choices anywhere near you. I mean, like I say, in Texas, there wasn’t anything where we lived. We were going to have to go an hour and a half just to attend the Eastern church. So it does mean for a lot of people they’re going to have to move, and that’s what we finally did. I mean, we moved all the way to Pennsylvania, but I felt like it was worth it. My eternal life was involved to find a church that was more friendly towards seekers. And certainly Shippensburg, it’s, you know, it still was quite a bridge to cross, and we didn’t, you know, just easily fit in there, but it was a whole lot easier than the Eastern. And again, I’m not in any way knocking the Eastern, but most of the Mennonite groups, their main concern is preservation. They don’t want to lose the good things they have, and their standards help them from drifting from that. And that’s good. It has helped to preserve them. And without the standards, I don’t know if there would be any conservative Anabaptists anymore. They may have all gone into the world. I don’t know. On the other hand, it makes it very hard for those of us on the outside to come in. So I guess my advice to, you know, would be just keep seeking. There are churches that are easier than other churches. You may well have to move. It’s worth it when your eternal life is involved. And those of you who are Amish, again, not all Amish are the same. You know, Michael, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of Amish don’t have salvation. They don’t have a living relationship with Christ. But it is not true that all Amish fall into that description. I’ve certainly met some very godly, very spiritually minded Old Order Amish. So, you know, if you want to stay Old Order Amish, then again, you know, you may need to move to other states, other, you know, districts or something like that to be able to be in a spiritually alive Old Order Amish setting. So, yeah, unfortunately, it’s not an easy journey for, well, I guess some people, yeah, they’re blessed to be born into an Anabaptist family and a spiritually alive church. But for a lot of us, yeah, we have to make those sacrifices. And to me, you know, when eternity’s involved, moving is a very small sacrifice to make when what is at stake is considered. And I know we’re out of time, so I think I’ll leave it with that. Yeah, thank you so much for that, David. And thanks to everyone in the audience that talked and said something. Did you have something more, John? No, I just wanted to say thank you. I’ve moved, I think, four times. And it’s been a blessing. And what I would add, it’s where you come in, see, if you come in and get hit real hard right off the bat, that’s a shock to your spiritual life. And… gradual thing, and Charity was very good at that. I know many, many people that are still walking just fine and did not, you know, coming from the world. And I’m just very thankful that the route that I’ve chosen or that God has allowed me to do is going. And thank you, David, for sharing that. Yeah, thank you, John. Yeah, thanks again, and it was a blessing, and I enjoy conversations like this. People from different walks of life and different experiences and how we can work together to advance God’s kingdom and how we, yeah, the different aspects of how we can walk in harmony and unity. And I have to say, David, you and your family have been a priceless blessing to us here in Pennsylvania. I’m so glad it all worked out. Yeah, well, why don’t we just have a word of prayer and we can consider ourselves dismissed.

Father, we thank you for this beautiful Saturday. Thank you for this time together. Thank you for our brother David and his family and the labor they have put into advancing your kingdom and the blessing they have been to so many people. Lord, and we just pray that this testimony could be a blessing to many and hearts could be soft to receive what you have to share through this message, Father. Lord, just be with us all. And we just pray for the advancement of your kingdom.

We pray that your name could be lifted up and your name could be glorified through this meeting in the precious name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. All right, well, blessings to all of you. Guide me, O the great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land.