My Testimony.

By  Ken Palmer

I was brought up by a Presbyterian mother and an agnostic father. Went to church my whole life growing up, and got saved at Bible camp in Australia when I was 12. My father worked for Goodyear International, so we traveled a lot, and I was in touch with many faiths and cultures. When I moved to Chile, I began to move away from the faith and delve more into worldly things, started playing guitar seriously (played music since I was five...piano mostly and moved into guitar around 10 years old).

Although I smoked pot sporadically and drank rarely before the 10th grade, I began doing more of it in High School when I was in Chile. The drinking age was 18, but we were American, so it seemed ok for us teenagers to waltz into a bar and order drinks. My usage increased and my church attendance decreased, thanks to my non-religious father who didn't force us to go, which I am sure upset my mother, but I never saw that part of that program.

When I graduated High School, I embarked into Music School in Atlanta and experimented with crack and powder cocaine with my peers. After graduating from there, I had strayed from the faith almost entirely and embraced world faiths such as Taoism and Buddhism. I went on to The Recording Workshop in Ohio, and it was there, drunk and stupid, that I challenged Satan in a house I lived in with three other artists. One was Puerto Rican, and very Christian. He grabbed and and tried to stop me from doing so, knowing in my mind that I hadn't had the armor of Christ on, so he probably knew what was coming after that.

That night, in a nutshell, Satan, or at least what I thought was Satan, came to me in a dream with his scurrying little minions all over the floor where I was sleeping, and a heavy windstorm brewed outside...this is still in my dream. He kept me from speaking or breathing, and rose me out of the bed while I started to try and recite the Lord's Prayer for protection. That of course did not help, until I hit myself and startled myself out of the dream. I called my mother the next day and told her about it, and she said my brother was having similar dreams, demonic and not so good forces coming at him.

My faith started to reemerge, but not completely, as I wasn't done with "doing my own thing" as of yet.

I moved to New Orleans and started playing music fervently with many people there, all around town, generally smoking pot and drinking lots of beer. My brother attended Tulane there, so we were close, and he went to alot of my shows.

My faith stayed on the back burner, but I did believe Jesus was who He said He was, and knew he was the Son of God, but never asked him to come into my life as I did when I was 12. I was still His though, now as I look back on those days, and He wasn't letting go.

I got real good band together and we moved to Providence hoping to penetrate the Boston scene in the early 90's..we had plenty of good shows there, and my late friend Eric Sand (911 victim) and I had many discussions concerning Philosophy and Faith....he was Jewish, but we always came to agreement that faith was not so important to how it was applied and how we lived and portrayed ourselves to the rest of the world. Alas, Eric was older than all of us, and he needed to move onto the next chapter of his life, get a real job and family, so he moved to NYC and began working at the WTC with his brother 'n' law (Cantor Fitzgerald). Our band broke up, and I started to drink alot and my neighbor happened to be a Cocaine dealer, so I started using plenty of that. I left Providence in the middle of the night, like a scared cat, and moved back to New Orleans, hoping to rekindle what I once had there a few years earlier.

Alas, that didn't happen, and I began doing more drugs and more drinking, and my character began to dwindle. I met my first wife there, and things were good in the beginning, but the drug and drink usage took its toll, as well as the failure of not getting anything going there, and we fought alot, sometimes violently. We moved to Florida, where my mother and father had retired, along with my sister whom were living there, thinking that that atmosphere might bring some stability. Unfortunately, it was a resort town, with lots of partying, and I was in the Hospitality Industry, and drinking and drugs went right along with, as I did as well. Our marriage carried on for only another year until one final knock down drag out fight, and I exposed my infidelity, and it was over from there.

For the next couple of years, I focused on my Chef work, and rose up the ranks of a infamous restaurant group there, and started doing real well, putting two good bands together and making some real good music, along with a couple of albums to show for. While I was working one day, there was a fellow that worked the line, and he was a Christian and very interested in me. I was into the supernatural, UFO's Demons and Angels, as well as Ghosts and such, and he took a liking to me. We talked alot, even when we were really busy, and he shepherded me back into the faith. One day I told him about the dream I had had in Ohio, and the countless similar dreams that followed throughout my life in various places, and he asked me about the strong presence in the dreams. I told him about the dark forces, but always noticed another force, benign as it was, was always there. He asked me to approach that particular force, because it most likely is the one that needs me the most. He was talking about Jesus.

A few nights later, I did just that. I was in a dream, or nightmare, and was being constricted, and I asked that force to help me. It did. To be honest, I felt like the Fifth Element character in that movie at the end when he ejects that force out of her mouth to destroy evil. Everything that was bad in the dream, disappeared. The next night, sober and worn out from a day's work, I was watching VH1 and Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville were singing "I don't know much, but I love you" at Austin City Limits, and I fell to my knees balling like a little girl. I then asked Jesus to come into my life, and my whole body went numb and warm and I fell asleep.

The bad things didn't stop there. My life did get better for a while, and things were looking up, but one day, my friend pulled me aside and we sat down and had lunch together on our break. He said the night before, he had a "Word" about me, and he fell to his knees and prayed fervently for me. He then told me that things are looking up for me, but there will be a time when things won't, and I will need to turn to Jesus for support. I was in the "Honey Moon" period right now with my faith, but that will come to an end soon. Something bad was going to happen.

And it did. My father got real sick, my ex-girlfriend and I began using drugs, and we fought violently, and me and my band members were going down the rabbit's hole with Oxycontin and Booze, not the kids stuff either, we are talking heavy amounts of Jim Beam, the cleanest heroin in the pharmacy, and sometimes, a little coke to get this going real good.

Then my ex-girlfriend and I got into a real big fight, and she broke a window, cutting herself up in the arm bad. I went to jail, lost my dream job, and my brother that was practicing law in the next town, had moved to Seattle. I spent a year there under probation for a battery charge, while my father deteriorated in health. My drug use continued, but I still managed to pray for deliverance every night. Jesus heard me...I know He did.

After my tenure with the courts was almost up, I met Kelley at my job. She was a waitress, going through a hard time with an ex-boyfriend, and a history of Meth use in her back pocket. She was a mess as well as I , but we clicked and started seeing each other. During this time, I had been lurking several sites, occasionally posting as "21stcenturyhuman" , being caught up by the New Age agenda, but Christ had His grip on me, I knew that for sure. if it wasn't for some of the dispensational sites I frequented, and Herb Peters, it would have been very hard to get through that year. Thank you FulfilledProphecy.com for your support that year.

Kelley moved to California to be with her mom for surgery, and in the winter of 2005, I moved to Seattle to be near my brother. I wanted a fresh start, but I hadn't let go of the drinking and I lied about my sporadic drug use. Kelley moved up to Seattle with me, my father passed away in the summer, and we carried on, tapping into our old ways for a couple of years, fighting now and then, violently at times as well, always under the influence. It all came to a head in April 2007, after some bad news about the death of some friends, I went on a binge, and she did as well. We both arrived home and began to fight very hard. I was blacked out for most of it, but from what she told me it wasn't pretty. The next thing I remember, I was in the back of a police car on my way to jail, looking at some time behind bars. In the cell, I cried out to Jesus to deliver me from all of it, balling my eyes out once again.

Kelley and I got married in 2008 on March 12, two days shy of my birthday, and 3 days shy of hers.  After being promoted back to the level I was at before my downward spiral ensued, I am doing much better than I have ever done in the Hospitality industry.  The Lord has blessed me beyond words, things I never deserved.  About this time, I ventured into Preterism known by my Music Tech name Sciota Micks, somewhat reluctantly, yet unafraid as I pleaded God to keep me grounded the whole way through.  I trusted Him as I do now, no matter what the cost and what type of terrain I need to push through.  I wasn't very versed in any creeds, at all to say the least, and I wasn't very comfortable with futurism, in any way, since the glaring simplicity of the texts were screaming out at me, that this is most likely all past tense events. Thank the Lord I didn't have those hangups, and was able to approach the word of God void of any outside presuppositions. 

I entered into it with a clean slate.  It has been a long road since I was 12, but I read the Word everyday, and pray almost every hour, thanking him for all those nights I faced darkness at my feet.  But my wife and I are both sober now (4 years) and very much in-love. Our life is better, maybe not financially at times, and we do have problems and issues, but Jesus is in control of those things, and He is alot better at it than we are, so things are much better. We don't fight much anymore, and if we do, it is only a disagreement that lasts a minute or so till it is resolved. If we keep Jesus at the Center, not in, but at the very core of our lives, miracles do happen. My story could have turned for the worse, but it didn't. And it came out, just as I had prayed it to materialize into. 

And with a little patience, and trust in Jesus, He can definitely accomplish anything.  Nowadays, I still play guitar, I record a lot at home, writing songs, centered on family, friends and my faith in Christ.  In 2009, my daughter Jean Virginia was born, the other love of my life, and one blessing that far outweighs anything I have ever received from God, likewise, a wish, I never fully deserved, considering my wife and myself both denied two of God's greatest gifts from the world in our youth by abortion, a sin, probably one of my greatest of sins, in which I will always ask forgiveness for. God is great everyone.  I am living proof.