(Comments by Joan Boney)
God spoke to me on August 5, 1975, and said: "Joan ... You know all these mistakes you've been making all these years? Those weren't mistakes. Those were sins." I was shocked!
With that word, God changed me and gave me HIS Holy Spirit to live in me and teach me and guide me and remind me of what Jesus said, and show me things to come. (John 14:26 & John 16:13)
A few days after I was born again, in the night, while I was sleeping I was transported into heaven. I was with God and with Christ and with the Holy Spirit. (I saw no physical images. It was just spiritual.) And at that time I was merged into the body of Jesus, made one with The Word of God, God and the Holy Spirit witnessing.
The exact same thing happened a second time, a few nights later as I was asleep in the night.
I thought this happened to all who were born again.
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During that time, I had a friend who had been Catholic and then was born again.
To me, it was like Bill went crazy. But after I was born again by God, I understood.
One day, we were having breakfast and I said to Bill, "You're right! This thing of being a Christian is really great!" (Bill kept eating.)
I said, "The thing I like best is that thing that happens to you in the night."
Bill kept eating but asked, "What thing?"
I replied, "I don't know what it's called ... It's when you are taken into heaven and are with God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit ..." Bill stopped eating and put his fork down and looked directly at me and said, "What are you talking about?" (That was the first time I realized that didn't happen to everyone who was born again.)
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In the Bible, I found a scripture describing something like that which happened to me:
2 Corinthians 12:2 (The apostle Paul says) I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
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I now think my being taken into heaven had something to do with the ministry work God was training me to do.
For the next five years, after I was born again, God taught me Bible as I read various scriptures. I was taken to every scripture, Old and New Testaments, where there were writings of prophets and about the work of prophets.
And one day, while driving down the street, God began speaking to me and said, "I have called you and set you in the body of Christ as an apostle." I cried out, "Apostle? what's an apostle?"
I knew there were apostles in the church today because I knew this scripture:
Ephesians 4
11-12 And HE gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
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But what do apostles do today in the New Testament Church?
The church I was attending professed to believe there are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers today in the church ... and we had prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers at that church group. But I had never heard them speaking of apostles there.
I asked the man who taught our singles class: "Don ... who are the apostles at this church group?"
He replied: "I don't know."
I then asked: "What do apostles do?"
He spoke some words but I really didn't think he knew, so I asked God.
God took me to Acts 15 to explain the work of an "apostle" in the New Testament Church.
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Acts 15
2 When therefore Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and disputation with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas, and certain other of them, should go up to Jerusalem unto the apostles and elders about this question.
3 And being brought on their way by the church, they passed through Phenice and Samaria, declaring the conversion of the Gentiles: and they caused great joy unto all the brethren.
4 And when they were come to Jerusalem, they were received of the church, and of the apostles and elders, and they declared all things that God had done with them.
5 But there rose up certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed, saying, That it was needful to circumcise them, and to command them to keep the law of Moses.
6 And the apostles and elders came together for to consider of this matter.
I felt God was showing me that apostles have an anointing to deal with doctrines of Christ in the New Testament church.
Acts 15 shows they had much discussion and then James stood up with the decision:
18 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.
19 Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God:
20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
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I felt God was showing me NT apostles today deal with church doctrine. I often speak "rulings" from the Holy Bible concerning divorce-remarriage; homosexuals-lesbians; adultery; fornication ... sharing NT scripture comparing verse with verse.
In this current time, many churches have fallen away from scriptures and have set up doctrines contrary to scripture. This is antichrist working in today's churches.
2 Thessalonians 2 (the apostle Paul says)
4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God.
In 1982, God explained this scripture to me saying: "The falling away are not people leaving the churches. The falling away are the churches leaving specific scriptures."
(end time antichrist churches, the apostasy in the church in the end time)
2 Thessalonians 2:8-12
8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of HIS mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of HIS coming:
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,
10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
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Between 1975 and January, 1980 God got me ready for the ministry, teaching me the work of the NT Church ministry through the examples in the Holy Bible.
At one point during that time, God said to me: Don't go to plays, football, and worldly things. Don't watch TV or news.
At one point, I was on a buying trip in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA. My mother and dad met me there. We were driving along in the car when someone spoke of a man named Jimmy Carter. I said: "Who is Jimmy Carter." They were shocked! Jimmy Carter had just been elected President of the United States and this is the first time I had ever heard his name.
(So I must have been abstaining from worldly things for several years, as God had me to do to prepare for the work of the ministry which HE would have me do.)
Right now, I seem to be returning to some of that withdrawing from worldly things.
(I'm 86 years old.)
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