MY TESTIMONY
Bro. Kimani Njogu

I was born on  12th April 1966 to a very strict Pentecostal Christian family.  I am the first born in a  family of eight children, four boys boys and four girls. However, apart from the one who died under normal circumstance, three had died under mysterious circumstances, most probably related to the fanatical stand that my parents had.

My parents belonged to a group that had swayed from the African Inland Mission  due to differences in speaking of tongues as evident of the baptism of the Holy Spirit . (The A.I.M. never believes and still does not believe in speaking in tongues.) The group called itself "Arata a Roho Mutheru" meaning "Friends of the Holy Spirit". This denomination had some outstretched beliefs. For example, they believe in divine healing to the extent that any other forms of treatment including medical treatment were branded 'idolatry'. This doctrine became so strong that if one was found to have gone to hospital under any circumstances, one was ex-communicated. No member is permitted even to shake hands with such a person as such an act was regarded as an act of defilement.

I grew up under such teachings and  being so zealous of them. I was so indoctrinated to an extent of not to even touch medicine or a pack of cigarettes.

In 1980 I found salvation after being preached to by a brother, and we even underwent circumcision together. I remember that everything in this denomination was spiritualized, even undergoing circumcision was a church affair and was considered a form of sacrifice or offering. Nonetheless I gave my life to Christ at the tender age of fourteen years. Two years later, in 1982, I got baptized in the Holy Ghost and I had a lot of zeal for the truth.

Now, as a young Christian I encountered some difficulties. This was due to the fact that our church never believed in fellowshipping with any other group of Christians other than members of the same church. Hence, I could not join the Christian Union in school. I could not confess to other students of my Christian faith because they would ask me to join them for prayers, a thing I was not allowed to do. This prompted me to backslide though not completely because there was something in me warning me of whatever I was doing, and hence, I was  on and off in my Christian life until I left school in 1987. For all those times, I had a lot of questions going through my mind as to the doctrines being held so strongly by the church which had to have biblical basis, yet answers were not forthcoming to me.

In March 1988 I got a temporary job as an untrained teachers in a local school and that's where I had all the chances to hold firmly to what I believed.  I remember a time when I wanted to attend a convention that had been organized by the churches and I sought permission from my head teacher to have a day off that I might be able to attend. The response from him was so negative and rude for he told me that he would never grant me permission to attend a Christian convention because such a case was not stipulated in the school regulations. I told him that I want to go and that the God I worship is the one who gives me strength to stand before the pupils and teach. I left for the meeting without his permission. When I came back he was so wroth that he threatened to deduct my salary by the end of the month something he never did though. That very year I received the message of the prophet William Marrion Branham.

For a fact the message of Branham was an answer to the many questions that had lingered in my mind. No sooner had I received the message that I found in the very church that I followed that conditions were introduced on how one was to handle "the message".  It looked alright from the onset but it was a trick of the devil. After a while it was impossible to rectify the mistakes that the church had lived with all along due to ignorance. For example the church was controlled by elders who assumed the role of pastors, the elders felt threatened by the liberty brought by the message and consequently refused, though cunningly, to embrace the message as it is.

Due to the elders' stand, there arose friction with some of us because we questioned the Biblical basis of some of the doctrines they held as the truth e.g. the head coverings for women, the issue of medication, the ministries coming up in the young people. etc. All these were branded as foreign ideologies and were told to seek alternatives outside the church which we humbly accepted.

When I met the so called old timers in the message mount I came across another problem that ministered more questions in my mind because every time I shared with some of them about God’s word as stipulated in the Scriptures they always said, "you see, the prophet said". As young believer I could not understand why they kept on repeating "the prophet, the prophet". Then by God’s grace, during the wake of a revival meeting, a minister brought me a book that I did not at that time take seriously but when I read it later I was so impressed that the following day, when the minister came, I told him that the writer of the book had said the truth. I did not bother at that time to know who had written it but the content was quite spiritual as the spirit in me was concerned. All that I had noted was that the book had come from Singapore and that it was attacking the polygamy doctrine. I did not know that the minister was so unhappy about my reaction because he took the book from me and later when I wanted to borrow the book again he refused to loan it to me. I was told that he later took that book and together with other books he had gotten from Prophetic Revelation threw them into a toilet so that nobody could read them. Talk about an Islamic Spirit that is fanatical and void of all truth, that minister is become a one.

Later on God opened a way and I got connected to a brother, Moses Segite, and from then on, I and the few brothers, we left "Arata-a-Roho Mutheru" together. We have never turned back.

Let me put things clear here, I am not deifying  anybody nor exalting anybody but if Bro. Branham was a prophet to the Laodicean Church Age, we cannot put him anywhere else other than where God had placed him. Equally so, if God has raised ministers for His Church to fulfill the Five-fold Ministry, be they Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers, we  cannot put them anywhere else other than where they are supposed to be. I thank the almighty God for his truth in these last days, for I am a  witness to what he has done.

May His Name be praised. Amen.

Kimani Njogo
(Eldoret-Kenya)

[njogukim@yahoo.com]
3 December, 2008