The Church in Spokane
TestimoniesThe God of Glory AppearedI believe that as a boy growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I had a sense of eternity in my heart as I looked up at the stars on a clear night, though I didn’t know yet who or what was this eternity. After graduating from the University of Washington in the early 70’s, I started seeking after God in a serious way due to a growing sense of emptiness and vanity in my life. One day God appeared to me and then I knew that there was a living and knowable God; yet I still didn’t know how to reach Him. Soon after this I determined to travel to Europe and eventually to Israel to visit a close friend who had had a real experience of God there. I hitchhiked through Europe, Turkey, and the Middle East and arrived in Jerusalem in June of 1973. Within two weeks I had finally found the way to this living God in the Person of Jesus Christ. I then spent three years in Denmark with Christians there, including Youth With A Mission and a Teen Challenge-type arrangement in Copenhagen. I returned to the USA and became a member of a “spirit filled” denomination near my parent’s home in Kirkland, Washington. After two years of being involved in this denomination, I still felt a longing for something deeper, something more of God. Then in my first year in nursing school at Seattle Pacific University, I met a Christian brother in my missions class (I was planning to be a medical missionary to the Middle East) and he invited me to a Bible study. I attended and discovered a group of people who also had a longing to know God in a deeper way. The fellowship was full of the enjoyment of the eternal life of God. There was no tongue speaking or prophesying as I knew it to be but I felt so enlivened and refreshed from having met with these believers. Over a year’s time I attended some meetings of the local church in Seattle and the local church in Bellevue and I heard some different and deeper interpretations of the Bible than I had heard before, yet all the time there was a deep confirmation in the depths of my being that this was the same living God appearing to me again. Eventually, as I searched the Scriptures, I discovered the words spoken by Watchman Nee and Witness Lee matched the Bible and touched the depths of the spirit that was in the writers when they wrote the books of the Bible. Now, 21 years later, I can testify that their ministry has led me to the living Person of Jesus Christ, to know Him inwardly in an ever deepening way and also to know and participate in His heart’s desire which is the building up of His Body, the church, to be His glorious bride at His coming back. Erick Kilgren |