God's Voice

By Jay Johnson

God's Voice by Jay Johnson

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685266684

Jay Johnson

Jay Johnson earned his Ph.D. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has held research positions at University of Alaska, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, where he served as Principal Research Physicist, co-director of the Princeton Center for Heliophysics, and Head of Space Physics from 2005-2016. He is currently a professor in the Department of Engineering and Computer Science at Andrews University, Michigan. He has published over 70 papers on theoretical plasma physics with emphasis on applications to space plasmas.

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God’s Voice

Jay Johnson

ISBN 978-1-68526-667-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68526-668-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Jay Johnson

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 1

Nothing Will Ever Be the Same

Saturday mornings were usually a blur after only a few hours of sleep. Working into the early morning hours and then rushing home to dive into bed for some needed rest was the normal routine. My wife, Karen, worked on Saturdays. And our young daughter and I were often the only ones home on these days. At not quite a year-and-one-half old, Joy would be up by six thirty or seven o’clock. Recently I had celebrated a thirty-ninth birthday and had begun my seventeenth year on the railroad as a brakeman.

Soon enough I heard the patter of little feet on the hardwood floors upstairs, and it was time to rise and do it all over again—spending the day with Joy and then off to work at four o’clock for another long night. Weekends were tough.

As we came down the stairs of our humble home in the suburbs of New York City, the sun was bursting through the windows of the living room. It was springtime, and the weather was good. Heading for the kitchen to make the much-needed coffee that would help fuel my next twenty hours of life, I instinctively poured some milk into a bottle for Joy. She walked away, wearing only a newly changed diaper with the bottle swinging from her mouth as she held the nipple in her teeth. Her hands clutched the ever-present yellow blanket that was now showing the tattered edges and wear of constant use. As I followed her into the living room, she plopped down on her little bouncy reclining chair, pulled her legs up, and began twirling her hair. As I turned to go back to the kitchen, she pointed at the television. Why not? Look at that. It was already on the right channel. Little Einsteins had become a familiar sound in the house these days.

Coffee now brewing, I returned to the living room to take up position on the love seat that sat in the bay window area. My mind turned toward the events of several days prior, and I could not help but chuckle. How did that happen? What was that all about? After running these memories through my head, I decided to do something completely foreign and out of character for me. Remembering the look on the face of the man who gave it to me, I walked into the adjacent room and pulled a book off the shelf that had been recently placed there and forgotten about. The movement seemed odd to me, spastic even, but I picked it up and looked at it. Grabbing a cup of coffee, still wearing only a pair of boxer shorts, I sat back down on the love seat and decided to take a look.

The book in my hand was the Holy Bible. To my recollection, I didn’t ever remember reading anything from a Bible, not even as a child. Certainly, from my time as a child attending a church service now and again, I had heard some things about God. But my impression of the Bible was that it seemed like a collection of fairytales. The name Jesus Christ was something I heard multiple times a day since I was old enough to understand the language, but the context in which it was spoken would be considered anything but biblical I imagined.

To me this book always seemed like any other book—just pick it up and begin to read it from the beginning. When it was presented to me, however, I was informed that it was a collection of writings by several different authors from throughout early history and that it contained many different books within the book and that I should pick one and read it. The man who presented it suggested the one entitled Esther perhaps. Opening the book and looking at the table of contents, I found the name and page number of this title. Nothing would ever be the same.

Beginning to read the first sentence, I was immediately startled and then overcome. Across the living room from where I was sitting, there was an opening to the adjacent room. On the far side of that room, there was a set of double French doors that led out onto a back patio area behind the house. Without warning something came bursting through those doors. In an instant it continued to my left going through the laundry room, then the kitchen, and the dining room, circling around, and ultimately entering the living room to my left. Immediately as it came through, I was hit on my left side in the lower rib area with what felt like a hard punch. This was swift and violent, and the entire movement through the house to where I was sitting took only about two seconds. This blow was sharp, and it caused me to quickly jump to my feet to face the direction it had come from. Standing a little over six feet and three inches tall and weighing 280 pounds, with a reputation for knowing how to take care of business if confronted, there was nothing I could see in front of me. Then things got worse. Standing there in shock, I was next overcome by the most horrible and wretched feelings in my experience. This was a physical and emotional manifestation of something I was wholly unaware of and unfamiliar with. It was as if you took the worst possible emotions—such as oppression, depression, complete despair, anxiety, and anguish—and were able to combine them into one mixed bag of torment. This plethora of hurt felt like it was being poured over me like some horrific, slow-moving ooze, but more than that, it was also being poured through me. I could feel it on the outside moving over me, and it had a weightiness to it. To describe it in physical terms, it might feel like someone pouring cold honey over you from a bucket, but it felt alive or maybe animate. Even more disturbing than this, it was seemingly moving through me at the same rate, and it gave the feeling of impending death. This event, coupled with all the negative emotional bombardment being inflicted, seemed unsurvivable. It was like everything in my body that was being touched by this was dying, and it was overtaking me from top to bottom.

Without thinking, just strictly reacting, I threw the Bible that was still in my hand to the floor. At the same time, I yelled, Whatever you are, get away from me! Leave me alone and get out of my house! Instantly whatever this was lifted and was gone. It didn’t just cease but lifted and left at the same time. I stood there, trembling and completely exhausted, this entire series of events lasting no longer than fifteen seconds. My immediate concern was for my daughter. As I turned around to look, she was still sitting in her chair with bottle in hand. There was a confused look on her face as she looked at me, but she was fine. Apparently, nothing had touched or adversely affected her. After a few moments, with caution, I picked up the Bible from the floor and took it out to the back of our detached garage and buried it under a bunch of things where it could no longer be seen.

The Foundation

Childhood’s earliest memory for me is riding a tricycle around the front porch of the family home less than one mile from where I sit writing this. The year was probably 1968 or 1969, and the house and yard seemed so big, as well did our old German shepherd. The street was steep, and it was also a dead end. That meant not many cars going up or down, and the ones you saw you would generally recognize, and then you would wave to the occupants. We had quite a menagerie of neighbors, a man who worked for a local well driller on one side, and a retired pediatric nurse on the other. This former nurse was a single lady whose husband had left her many years prior. Arriving from Germany as a teenager, she was sent to America by her parents in order to escape the possible dangers in Europe. Across the street was a rented house in which the father of this family was a tree climber and cutter by trade. Next to them on the uphill side was a family who was well known in the community as the mom and her daughters were very active with the local recreation department. There were many houses along connected streets, and there was never a shortage of kids or things to do. It was a typical blue-collar neighborhood in a working-class town. Brewster, New York, is a small but once vital community that sits along the railroad tracks in a beautiful part of the Hudson Valley region. Still referred to as the