Languages: German, English
Nationality: Austria, residing in Paraguay since 2012
Birthdate: 5th of December, 1975
Married, one son and one daughter

On December 5, 1975, I was born into a very Christian family as a latecomer. Two older siblings and I grew up in the freedom of rural living and under the education of faithful New Apostolic (NAC) parents. I experienced a very sheltered and untroubled childhood. They baptized me as a baby and in the following years they instilled the love of Jesus in me through their consistently good example to me in all things, whether in earthly life on our mountain farm,  in the labor for my soul, or in the active charity. They taught me early to pray, for which I am incredibly grateful.

At about 15 years of age, when childlike recklessness should disappear and one should become suited for greater responsibility, the time of my confirmation came to be responsible for my own religious life. I remember that the earlier years were very beautiful and harmonious in the church and the children were taught the biblical stories, both at home and by the teachers in the church. At an early age, I learned to praise God through singing, which led to a growing desire to participate in the church choir, and I was already accepted into the choir before my confirmation.

The older I became and the more I grew out of the sheltered and untroubled childhood at the rural farm , the closer I came to “the world”. Like everyone else, I got to know the advantages and beauties of the world and tried various things. Having escaped my mother’s strict hand and grown over her head, I simply did not listen very carefully any more when good advice came from her. One wanted to become independent. I never fell into the habit of smoking, but I liked the alcohol and I quickly learned how to spend the night in bars. If I could have graduated in these “subjects”, I would certainly have been one of the best.

Although I personally was able to deal well with this vice, my lively, open and convincing nature led me to seduce many of my friends at that time also, who were almost exclusively brothers and sisters in faith. They looked up to me and they “followed me”. I was really good at that, and from that perspective, I was at that time a first-class servant of Satan, which unfortunately would only become clear to me much later. What kind of damage must I have caused? But at that time my friends and I liked that lifestyle very much.

I was always aware of who I was and what faith I had to bear witness to, however. Even if the Saturday nights were long, the church visit on Sunday was always anchored in my heart as the time with God. Nothing made me miss this time, even if the hours of the night’s rest could be counted on one hand. Of course, how much could I receive from the sermon on such days? Nevertheless, there was something in my heart that made me hold God high.

At that time I thought that I was a normal, good Christian—perhaps even a very good Christian—because in the course of my time at the New Apostolic Church, I had many duties and held many offices. I was a youth assistant and later youth leader for the congregation, I worked for many years in the International Youth Forum, which advised the international church leadership on youth care; I was trained as one of the ministry directors and was given the office of a deacon (which included being called to preach in church services) just to name a few of the tasks. But I was soon to realize that my faith and my lifestyle at that time did not honor God.

After 2001 when I took over my parents’ Farm, managing it with great pleasure as a nature-loving person, balancing it with my professional life, my “carefree” lifestyle began to change little by little. I began to rebuild or renovate the farm and to make some major landscape changes. God “occupied” me from then on with all these responsibilities, so that my dissipated lifestyle was brought into better order. God also allowed some “disasters”, which for me were dramatic events and in many ways brought me closer to God. During this time I began to study the Word of God more closely, and I asked many questions to my “apostles” of that time, but many answers only raised more questions for which I would not get the true meaning until much later. More and more I searched for answers on the Internet. However, I was still very much involved in my religious system at that time.

I still did not know how close the coming of Jesus was, and so the desire arose to raise a family. My request to show me “the right one” was answered in July 2008, when I got to know my present wife Regina. From the very beginning, it was clear to all of us that we wanted to spend our lives together. Regina was still a member of the Roman Catholic Church at that time, but she was not opposed to trying the faith I had then, and attended the NAC services with me. Soon there was a desire to have children. Although I was already studying the different beliefs a lot on the Internet and the Bible more or less carefully, I was still too firmly attached to the old, traditional faith of my parents, and we baptized our newborn son full of joy in the NAC, as is customary.

But the year 2010 would be the year where I would take a giant step closer to the truth and set the course for my future. Soon I realized that even within the NAC leadership, there were different views on doctrine. This prompted me to review all our creeds and teachings at that time, which took a while. I started with the Ten Commandments, and then I stumbled over the second and fourth commandments! Where had the detailed second commandment gone? Who had deleted it from the Ten Commandments taught in the well-known Christian churches? And what about the Sabbath? Why should this no longer apply? It is already obvious that the next step was to recognize the validity of the Sabbath, and one quickly reaches the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church. I first encountered the writings of Ellen White, and the first book I read with a voracious appetite was The Great Controversy. From that time on -- it was about mid-2010 -- heaven opened for me, and God let streams of water flow down with knowledge that was nothing new to Adventists. How could I have not found this community of faith until now? The more I compared my faith with the one I found in the SDA, community, the more the foundations of my faith began to crumble. Within weeks I was devastated and could hardly pray any more, because a prayer that is not spoken “in spirit and in truth” would not have the appropriate effect. What had I believed in the last 35 years? Was everything wrong? And the terrible premonition arose in me that sooner or later I would have to leave “my” church. Then, in the autumn of 2010, I searched the Internet for a lunar calendar and came across a bitter opponent of our present ministry, Sascha Stasch, because at that time I was interested in the true calendar of God and in the Sabbath. At the same time, I came across John Scotram and his articles. He also explained God’s calendar. I still remember very well those two long weeks that tore me apart. It was arguably Satan’s trap, because if I had made the wrong decision here, I would probably have gone another way. But God had also allowed this test so that I would never question this theme of God’s true calendar again. Immediately afterwards, I devoured the Orion presentation and drew the clock of God myself in my CAD program. It all sounded too good to be true. But the Spirit of God answered the seeker and the conviction that I must have arrived at the true source of light was permeating me. The Orion clock revealed to me the grave errors that had crept into the SDA church, and within hours I knew that the SDA church was God’s judgment church, but it was apostate. On December 22, 2010, my “apostle” gave me the last answer to a decisive question of mine, and it turned out that there were also differences in teaching among the ministers and this answer was completely contrary to what I had already accepted as true. Now I had enough conviction that...

On December 23, 2010 I wrote to my current friend John Scotram for the first time and from that day on, several thousand e-mails would be exchanged until I would see him face to face. It was the beginning of a deep and special friendship until this day. And now it was time to share my discoveries and my new faith with my family and friends even more fully. You can imagine that a world collapsed for them. “What happened to our son?” “Now he is crazy!” The time also came when the first conversations with the church leadership took place, when I publicly expressed my “doubts” about the teachings of the NAC and finally left the church with my son. I had begun to live out what I had accepted to be true. I never thought it possible that the Lord’s health message and the day of worship could actually separate family and friends, but that was exactly what happened. The more I kept the Sabbath, the more it became clear who my true friends would be. Only one of them and his small family kept the Sabbath with me and we were able to start a small Sabbath house church - at least until I would later make a very long and distant journey with my family.

The newly recognized message of the fourth angel from Revelation 18 pierced through me and my wife, whom I could marry in the meantime. The desire to finally witness to the truth by immersion was to become reality. Although I tried to be baptized in the SDA church before, this door was slammed shut because I did not conceal my belief in the Orion message, which they rejected. And so, in spring 2012, my little family went to Paraguay to meet the messenger of God personally and to be baptized again. After another semi-annual break, which I used in Austria to proclaim the message everywhere, I was called to Paraguay in November 2012 as one of the four modern evangelists. For the loving guidance of our God I am grateful to Him from the bottom of my heart and He alone deserves the glory!

There has never been a greater outpouring of the heavenly light during the entire history of the earth than in the past nine years. The latter rain has fallen! Have you been immersed?