The worst person on earth

“My soul does not tremble before God, but my soul is warmed by God like by fire.”

I was born and raised in Armenia. The city where I grew up was initially called Karaklis after the Black Church and after 35 years it was changed to Kirovokan, after the first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast Party Committee, Sergei Kirov.

Now the name of this city is Vajadzor. A small city and at the same time the third largest in Armenia. All my childhood and joy passed there.

My father served in the parish. He was a pastor – a strict, honest man with big hands.

I grew up decent, didn’t hurt others and didn’t ask too much. On the day of my sixteenth birthday, I packed a bag.
I first went to work in Siberia and then to Moscow. I went to the army. I helped the congregation as much as I could. I got married at the age of twenty-four, my bride Anya is a beauty. I have not met a more beautiful woman before or after her. Supporting a young family turned out to be difficult – I started doing business and dived headfirst into it, but I didn’t forget God and it seems that God remembered me too. In a short time, I managed to amass an impressive fortune from large construction orders.

We had a daughter and after her came year 2012. This year completely broke me down and left nothing alive. All I was left with was a scorched earth.

The Christian brothers, to whom I entrusted part of my business and cheated me. More specifically, six figures in foreign currency. I received threats, experienced blackmail and my family was attacked. In the place where I used to carry the cross, offence arose, which over time turned into resentment. I pressed into God as if I were banging my head against a cast-iron frying pan, but there was no longer God inside of me. I ended the year with few million dollars in debt.

In autumn I went to the forest. I asked the Almighty to show me the way. I fell to the ground and screamed at the sky until I had no voice left. I screamed until I could taste the metallic taste of my own blood on my palate. I cursed God with the last words. I said things that a God-loving person would not say and a God-fearing person would not dare to say. I left my last tears in the forest behind the Moscow belteway and came out as a new empty person.

I decided that God, if He exists, cannot deal with some thieves and villains. Can’t tell good from evil.

God can take not only my life but also my child’s life at His will. The life of a little girl who had no time to do either good or bad on this Earth.

If this is God in all His indifference, we would all be better off without Him.

There were people who helped me pay off my debts. I took it for granted. It is, as it is, but it was not and will not be otherwise. I did not see a drop of God’s mercy in it.

As I left the church, I became over time more like those bandits who had once fled the country with my money, until finally I surpassed them in my no fear in God.

I became what I despised so much—the worst person on earth.

Years passed, I took the dirtiest job and it brought me the dirtiest money. I left my family, I saw my daughter once every few months.

In the morning of 2019, my wife called to say that she had been diagnosed with cancer.

“It’s okay, Anya, everyone is sick. If you don’t die, you will be healed.”

Then a few years. Chemotherapy. Two operations. Sometimes I helped, but always not enough and with a closed heart.

When I drove her to the hospital for the last time, she looked at me cautiously, as if observing me, and quietly said:

⁃ Do you know that I will not return from there?

I said everything will be fine, stopped at the clinic and let Anya out of the car. I didn’t cringe at all. Nothing flinched. My heart was not of stone, but of steel.

Two days later, the doctor called me and said:

⁃ She has one night left to live. Anya dies before dawn.

I started threatening him and offering money. The doctor was silent for a long time and only then said:

⁃ I don’t need your money, it doesn’t solve anything here, but you know what else… I myself live according to my conscience and I don’t believe in God, that’s why I don’t have any problems with Him. But you, Armen, have great difficulties with your God. You two should make contact with each other and maybe then something will become clear up…

I threw my phone against the wall. I ran around the room like a dog in a cage, my ears were ringing, I felt like I was going crazy.

Then I heard a voice.

Familiar voice from my childhood in Kirovakan, from which I had drifted away:

⁃ GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES…

I rubbed my eyes, tugged at my ears, I needed to make sure it wasn’t a delusion. Then it happened again. THREE TIMES. In an empty apartment. At eleven or something in the evening. VERY SPECIFICALLY.

I fell to my knees, lowered my head and saw a bright light in front of me, which could be compared to when you see a train passing by when you are alone in a  tunnel at night.

I knew it was Jesus standing by me. I knew it was my last day on Earth. I knew that I would die today and that I would surpass Anya in my godlessness.

I didn’t know that it was not me who died with that voice, but the person who was born in me, in the forest, in the fall of 2012.

That night, the worst man on earth lost four kilograms of his live weight. The worst person lived in a dialogue with God for eight hours. Jesus answered my every insult, took away my anger, cleansed me and gave me a miracle.

The doctor called at seven in the morning and the very next day I took Anya home from the hospital ward.

Three years have passed. I soon went from a parishioner to a church administrator and later on December 22, I became the pastor of the church.

Today I help people. I try to become that person for them who wasn’t there when I needed him.

You can’t change the past and only God knows how many people I can help.
Only I know that this is the most important thing and it is probably all I know about life.

P.S. Even the worst person on earth deserves mercy and a chance to be forgiven. Remember my story when you decide that you have no hope left.

Source: https://t.me/Armen_pastor

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