My Story and the Oath Made to the Amish Church.

welcome back to the amish potato we are here at balance rock on a sunday afternoon uh just enjoying the nice warmth the last warmth as the sun goes down as promised here is that zoom meeting call i had with my cousin where she shares her experience with that oath that you have to make when you join the amish church the promise to god that you will abide by their ordinances and their rules and you will you will and you will never leave so um without further ado here's my cousin velda my name is velda johnson i am i'm married to jason we've been married for 17 years we have three boys my oldest is 15 i have a 13 year old and a six year old i've also been a homeschool mom for the last 10 years uh and i've done some part-time bookkeeping on the side but uh i grew up amish in uh the northern uh indiana a community in the old order amish church and so i was amish for about 21 years of my life i left when i was 21. when i left there i didn't leave the amish until after i joined the amish church and i didn't get to know the lord until after i was homage i mean after i joined the church and so um when i turned 16 you know i was like most of the amish kids i started participating in rum springer the running around and um i had as a teenager i went through a lot of depression i was um i think a lot of it contributed to a lot of unresolved childhood trauma that i had experienced that i just didn't have the emotional capacity to deal with and so i really had closed off my heart completely to a lot of that and was just trying to cope with life in general and so i think the depression was just so it became more intense after the rum springer because um i mean i didn't enjoy that lifestyle i didn't enjoy the partying and all of that and so i was looking for a way of escape i just wanted to i was looking for a way of escape from the depression without really having to deal with the root issues that were causing the depression and so the coping skills that i developed was i was just looking for a place to to escape from everything escape from the rooms bring a lifestyle and escaping from uh the depression and then i became a member of the amish church thinking that that was going to give me some reprieve i guess and it did it did get better the depression did get better it wasn't near as intense when i joined the amish church but it um it didn't go away completely either but one of the things that i started dealing with after i joined the church was just this sense of always i felt stifled like i was in a box and i couldn't move and get out of that box and so um i was a member of the amish church for three years before i left so i left three years after i joined the church and so i wasn't really aware of the like the questions that we were asked the baptismal questions so getting into the questions so i wasn't really aware of the questions that i was asked when i became a member of the amish church i kind of you know it was more about my focus was more about just following protocol you know what am i supposed to do how you know when i get baptized uh what are the questions that i'll be asked and what do i do when i'm asked those questions and and i don't think that i can remember anyone ever really sitting down and explaining in detail like what kind of a commitment i was making to the amish church and so i was kind of doing it ignorantly and in kind of an unbelief because i mean i didn't know i was blind to what i was really doing i wasn't aware and so um i uh so fast tracking fast forward you know so i left and when i left um that was something that was told i was told that i was breaking a promise and even then i didn't quite comprehend the full the fullness of that i didn't quite comprehend or understand what kind of promise i was breaking because i didn't even know and have the realization the full realization then that i had made a promise to the church and so i just want to talk about the question the specific question and i i might give this to you if you can upload it like on the screen but the question that i was asked was do you promise to live by the standards of the church and to help the standards being the ordinances of the church and to help administer them according to christ's word and teaching and one of the things that i saw there is that they're they're lumping together the ordinances as though they are part of christ's word and his teaching but they're not one in the same they're two different things so just to clarify this question was asked you on your day of baptism right yes so and that's when they believe that you're born again you get baptized correct right okay and the question is asked you it was asked in german i didn't understand german i mean even though we speak pennsylvania dutch we don't the german that they they use when they read the scriptures and things and they used that same german to ask us these questions so i had no idea like the actual definition of what he was asking me and so let me finish the question here so i'll start over do you promise to live by the standards the ordinances of the church and to help administer them according to christ's word and teaching and to abide by the truth you have accepted thereby to live and thereby to die with the help of the lord so here it's like they're appealing they're saying that the ordinances are the same thing as as christ's word there's the same thing and you're supposed to to keep these laws and appeal to the lord for his help to keep them does that make sense yeah and so it's actually saying you know hey i made this oh lord will you help me keep this oath but i want to talk about the oath um it's not really a true oath because it an oath that's made should be made in based on the truth for me to live according to the ordinances and subject myself to uh following them and to to doing them would in essence be elevating the the standards that have been created by man above what god is saying that i should live by so it's a direct conflict with each other and so um so this was about so about five or six years ago i started struggling with this again and this is this is really the essence of my testimony you still started struggling with it again yes oh sorry so you struggling you know right after you left and then it kind of went away and yes you started struggling with it again okay yes and so the way that it looked when i was struggling five or six years ago was it started surfacing and i started having being bombarded with these thoughts like you're obligated to the amish church you're obligated to these ordinances you have to do these things like it just felt like there was a strong i don't know how else to describe it it just felt like this heavyweight just kind of coming down upon my head and it felt like it was um i was stuck and i couldn't move in any direction and so i just began to kind of you know because here i was having all these these memories of all these thoughts emerging and i'm thinking but i've been i've left i've been gone now for 15 years that that doesn't make any sense to me so i was trying to rationalize this in my own mind like but there's no way i'm going back what is this all about you know and so i just began to cry out kind of to the lord and say what on earth is going on here and i literally not long after that i felt um i felt kind of impressed to go and research the questions that i was asked when i was baptized and i became a member of the church and so what's interesting is is that you know when you become baptized in the amish church it's like the two are inseparable you can't become baptized unless you become a member and you can't become a member unless you're baptized so it's like they kind of lump the two together but yet those two things are also very separate things you know and so so yeah so i was having all of this stuff going on inside of me and i googled the questions i didn't remember what obviously i didn't know what they were so i googled them and then i just and that's when i really when i read over the questions and i started i just felt this intensity to research what it means to make an oath and to to dive into the word of god to dive into the bible to do a study on the word oath and i i literally picked that word apart you know just trying to figure out like what what does this mean like this struggle i'm having what is this all about lord is it because i didn't keep the promise and and now i'm being punished and so as i started you know diving into it i really the lord his word really helped me uh see the reality the full reality of what uh what i had bound myself to and so the scriptures that i kind of finished up were there was one in matthew matthew chapter 5 and there's another one in james chapter 5 and they basically say the same thing they're they're saying that here i'll read james 5 it just basically says that uh above all things my brethren swear not neither by heaven neither by earth neither by any other oath let your yes be yes and your no be no lest you fall into condemnation and see i was experiencing a lot of condemnation and a lot of condemnation was coming from the guilt the guilt that i felt the guilt that was telling me you know what you didn't fulfill that promise you left you shouldn't have left you should have stayed you need to be uh you need to be living according to the standards that that that you promised you would and so those scriptures really encouraged me and i really began to struggle and i was really confused because on the one hand side i was dealing with all this guilt because i didn't keep the promise and then on the other hand side i was dealing with the conviction of the holy spirit and there's a difference so the conviction of the holy spirit so i had i had trouble sorting you know all of this and then i realized you know in the beginning i didn't know why this was all coming back to me but then later i realized that it was coming back because the lord wanted me to see the truth and he wanted to set me free from the guilt and it was the conviction of the holy spirit see the the conviction of the holy spirit gives us the desire to change to change our minds to change our you know our ways to and so i began to embrace his conviction and began to to see the need for repentance and repentance is such a gift i mean when i repented and i repented for even making the oath and for even coming into an agreement with it and i broke the agreement that weight that i had that was on my head that was just felt like it was crushing me and all of that stuff lifted immediately off of me and i knew without a doubt that i had just been set free the i was set free from the guilt i was set free from the obligation of it i was set free from all of it and i just was like wow i couldn't have done that that that was clearly a working uh and and the influence of the holy spirit influencing me to cooperate with him so that he could set me free so that he could deliver me i didn't need to live with that guilt i could be free from it and so now like if if someone would come to me and say you know what you you did you didn't do the right thing by leaving it wouldn't even it wouldn't even uh phase me because i know that i did the right thing you know what i mean according to um what i learned as i studied the word and that you know so anyway that's kind of the just of it yeah i've just wondered if people still living in that area struggle with that still i think so i think there's there's a lot of people that believe they can't leave because of that you know they they think that they would be seriously doing something wrong yeah and it'd be hellfire for each energy right yeah yeah so yes and so i don't know i think the way that i would encourage people is for especially for those that have left is just pray about it i mean if it's something the lord wants to convict you of or something that you need to repent of or whatever leave it up to him because he works in ways you know it may not be something that he might be wanting to deal with but maybe at a later time or whenever so i i mean i wouldn't just because of my own testimony and and me sharing this you know don't base your own conviction based upon what happened to me yeah let the holy spirit be the one that brings the conviction so i just found it i just found it interesting because i've watched your previous video on it i found it interesting how you dug into it and yeah i really did like it's it's based on a false some false culture or rules i don't know how that works it's a false oath like it's yeah it's a false oath because it doesn't it's not based in the truth and one of the things that i was you know when i looked up the definition of the word oath it means um like it's a solemn affirmation or a declaration made with an appeal to god for the truth of what is affirmed i know that's a lot to just absorb all right i'll put that on the screen too so yeah and that's not the full definition but that's part of it you know and it just says that um so when you're appealing to god you're appealing that what you're declaring is true and it's based on his truth and then it says the appeal to god in an oath implies that the the person imprecates which means to call it evil so the appeal to god in an oath implies that the person implicates his vengeance and renounces his favor if the declaration is false or if the declaration is a promise which in my case it was a promise and then it says but it was it was still a fault it was based in falsehood see it wasn't based in the truth and we talked about that and so then it says the declaration is false or if the declaration is a promise the person invokes the vengeance of god if he should fail to fulfill it so if you're making an oath that is based in the truth and you're not fulfilling that oath then you're invoking the vengeance of god does that make sense but in this case the oath was not based in the truth and then it says a false oath is called perjury which is a crime so in essence i made a false oath that was a crime and i needed to repent of it and the holy spirit convicted me and he forgave me and he released me from the guilt of making the oath in the first place oh wow see that's yeah that's going way deeper than yeah i would have even thought of it yeah that's amazing it blew me away really blew me away and i just you know i it blew me away and it just gave me even more reverence and all for the lord because it just revealed how much he cares how much he cared about my well-being you know and how much he's rescued me from he's just he he loves me he cares and he cares about about others that are stuck in this stuff too it just breaks my heart too because you know i see so many people and there's so many people that i know that i i they're amish and i love them but i see the oppression that they're under and it breaks my heart like i'm if you if i just sometimes i just want to say i want to yell it to them from the rooftops yeah listen you don't have to live like this i know it's and it's you know it's so like hearing the true gospel and what it is is so freeing and it's so absolutely it's so simple it's much more flippable than what you surrender right exactly i want to say something else that just came to my mind but it was about the ordinances okay look and i i think this is very important because the ordinances so you were swearing an oath to uphold the teachings and ordinances of the amish church and these ordinances think about it they were actually there to make you a better person if you followed all these ordinances to the letter you could become a better person you could impress god and maybe he would allow you into heaven how anti-gospel is that that's the exact opposite it's in complete conflict with each other i was just like yeah and so i you know understanding that you know i remember for a long time i believed that you know there was so much of following the ordinances that um we get caught up in and even our identity became about doing all these stuff doing all this stuff and i think the ordinance actually are used as a replacement for the conviction of the holy spirit it's like you know what i'm saying yeah because it's almost like the they're looking to the ordinances to make them righteous to make them become better people well all that produces is self-righteousness you know you know the bible says where does it say you know none of us are righteous none you know we don't become righteous by following all these laws we become righteous through the inner workings of the and the influence of the holy spirit in the sanctification process that's we are we are being made righteous yep i was just thinking that today and the sermon was like as an amish kid you know you're you're they your parents want you to join the church but in order to join the church you're trying to fix yourself and then kind of join the church and then hopefully you don't sin too much after that right right i was born again that yeah like you were saying it's complete opposite it's we should come to christ broken let him do the work right and then fix us he can fix it because we never will be able to by ourselves no and i think it's really important to to also just know that that apart from god we can't do anything it's in relationship with him that all of this can come about that we can be changed transformed that that kind of thing so so there you go guys uh that was great i really appreciate her doing that and sharing that story with everyone um that was only about half of the call so i had the other half coming up um it the first part was about more more about the oath and how that affected her life obviously and the second part is more about her experience coming out of the church so be waiting for that make sure you hit the like button subscribe hit that bell icon so that you're notified when the her next video comes up so we appreciate you guys watching um give her a thanks and we will see you next time

Channel: the amish potato

Views: 16,887

Keywords: amish, church, cult, evil, testimony, leaving, God, Christ, religion

Id: GYrjKjrqLq4

Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021