Hi, my name is Joel Cartmell, and this is my testimony:
I used to read the bible for hours every day, but after a while it became too much for me. So I decided to go through the Epistles word for word, to study the bible more in depth. I started going through the Epistles, writing everything down by hand. Over the years I slowly worked on the Epistles while my health declined. I always had bad headaches and my brain was always in a fog. Eventually it got to the point where I could only comprehend part of the verse I was working on.
My muscles ended up getting worse and worse, I struggled just to sit down and work on the Epistles. Sometimes I put a belt tightly around my stomach in order to hold my upper body up, so that I could have enough strength to sit in the chair. My muscles were so weak that I had to force my arms and shoulders to work while flipping through books all day long. I had to force my arm to move the mouse, my thumb to hold the mouse and my finger just to click it. I was in constant pain, always trying to force everything to work.
I found out that I had adrenal exhaustion; some of my problems were also due to an old injury I had received from a chiropractor. I could hardly sleep and my body was not functioning normally. I eventually became like a zombie. I could hardly think and struggled to talk.
In the middle of the night I would get up to work on the Epistles, because I was so sick of lying in bed awake. Most of the time, I was so tired I could hardly force myself out of bed to work on them. My eyes were so sensitive to light because of my adrenals that I had to put on sun glasses just to look at the computer screen. Even sun glasses were not good enough; I could hardly bear looking at the screen. The brightness of the screen would cause my adrenalin to go crazy and my body was too weak to handle it.
If a phone rang, a dog barked, or anything loud happened, my head would go weird; like on a windy day when the lights go dim and then come back again. If I was in a public place it felt like my knees were going to buckle and that I was going to lose consciousness. My fatigue, physically and mentally, was extremely bad. All I desired to do was to lie in bed all day long, but I would not allow myself too.
It got to the point where I could hardly pray. I would pray like this: “Faith, patience. Ok what was I praying again? Oh ya: faith, patience. What was it again? Oh ya: faith. What was the other word again? Oh: patience.” Then I would forget that I was praying. And I would repeat this over and over again.
By God’s grace I finished the Epistles, and after a while I started back up on Acts and Revelations. I was so tired that I struggled to even look at a Scripture, however with God’s help I was able to work through Acts and Revelations.
I did not want to work on the Gospels, but I thought that I better put my faith in God and try to sprint to the finish. I had to force myself to put far more time and effort into them than I could bear. But by God’s grace, and His grace alone, I was able to finish!
As I am writing this, I have been running on two hours of sleep. And when I go to bed, I know that everything will repeat itself again tomorrow. I am unable to work and have ended up on welfare. I have no friends and no respect. However, I have a Friend that sticks closer than a brother! I have a Friend who is the Great I AM! I have a Friend that raises the dead! I have a Friend who is Love! I may be weak but He is strong!
As I am working on this, things around the world are setting up for the antichrist. Right now I am waiting and watching for when the United States goes bankrupt, it is not too far off. Things will start to get more interesting, you just watch!
