His face gives the impression of a stretchy-skinned pumpkin. Dark brown curls are gathered into a short ponytail at the nape of his wrinkle-etched neck. His dark brown eyes widen into triangles and stretch into pencils variably, like the almost spastic stretch of his smile. (His thin lips reveal a jack-o-lantern head of yellowed teeth—half his face). A round nose is scrunched between, cheeks contortionist-like. More often than not, he’s pulled into his widest expression of glee—otherwise, nodding in huge-eyed agreement.
‘Philip’ was born in California. Shortly afterwards, his family moved south to a suburb of Guadalajara, Mexico, he said.
“Which is now, there’s a large, large community of people of multiple nations. You got a lot of Europeans, you got a lot of Americans, it’s just grown. Humongous. But when I first arrived it was pretty small.”
He attended school there for several years before moving back to California for high school. There, he started dating. Upon graduation, he enrolled in a local community college and married his girlfriend while pursuing a general course load.
“I didn’t really pick a field. But I loved to write,” he said. However, he decided early on to push for real estate certification, with the promise of a lucrative career.
“I always sought goals. I always sought, maybe to build a company from the ground up. I always sought a drive—something real. Because if you don’t pursue what’s inside of you, it’s just a dream. And a lot of people get stuck in that paradox of a dream—and they go through cycles and cycles. And I didn’t want to be that way. I wanted to bring forth my dreams to be real.”
As a realtor, he was well on-track to financial success.
“Sold real estate. Enjoyed it, liked it. Made lots of money.”
But a decade in, he began to discover for himself that money isn’t happiness.
“I was so empty. I was empty. Making all this money, thinking this is going to replace this [void]. I just walked into a dealership, bought a car in cash, never done that before! Then walked out and it’s like oh, it’s not quenched!”
He began looking answers.
“I was seeking. Wanted to know what’s this all about. Why we’re here. So I started looking into self-help book, and philosophy, and physics, and read on Hawkings, and so on and so forth. And it just… quenched me for a little while, and then I thirsted more and more.”
At the same time, relations with his wife were cooling, he said.
“We basically got together after high school, if you will. We were young. And so when I tried sharing this with her, I realized that we basically outgrew each other. As you become adults, you have different views.”
Finally: “One day I just called my sister, and she’s a JW [Jehovah’s Witness]. So she had them come over.”
Their arguments seemed to hold some truth. He joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and became part of their local community, he said, hoping to find the fulfillment he craved.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses spoke with his wife as well, he said. But she wasn’t searching in the same way he was.
“She enjoyed the world, she enjoyed the shopping, she enjoyed the spending, she enjoyed all that. And I started taking an interest in other ways, because I wasn’t going to satisfy her. I wanted to devote myself to the LORD. And I said, well I can’t support that, and you’re not going to support me, so what do we do?”
Over the next several years, as tensions grew between him and his wife, he grew in his relationship with God, he said. And as he studied the Bible himself, he began to find issue with some of the Jehovah’s Witness teachings.
“I took this to the head priest. I wanted to show him look, I understand what you’re doing. You strictly invoke people to follow the guidelines written in your Watchtower magazines. And you express that what’s in there is legit, referring to that’s what’s in the Bible. Because you’ve taken Scriptures from the Bible, and you’ve tied it into the story, outlined as examples of worldviews in this binary folder. But the problem is that after I’ve been reading a lot of your binary folders, I see the contradictions from there to what’s in the Bible. There’s something that needs to take place here. Either you make that adequate change, or what’s happening is that you’re molding people to your view.”
They immediately disfellowshipped him: a practice in which faith members are essentially exiled and disconnected from all Witnesses.
“They right away, put a flag on me. That was it. And when I went to the assembly, I didn’t get the ‘Hi, how are you going,’ anymore, I got the cold shoulders. And I realized they didn’t have an answer, and they got rid of me.”
That was a turning point in both his search for meaning and his marriage.
“The LORD changed me. And it was a miracle. So from that moment on, she realized the change. She didn’t like it.”
She tried to mold him into someone he was not, he said, and was frustrated by his stubbornness. He had given her opportunity to call off their marriage multiple times by this point, he said.
“She was stuck in her paradox because she liked the money. I was making a LOT of money, and I was miserable. I was miserable. I was feeling used. I feel like she wanted me for the money. And that was it. We had a brand new house, we had brand new cars. We vacationed everywhere, just about. But it’s just, I was miserable inside. Because I realized the her heart was elsewhere. And she was going to keep those doors closed.”
With his newfound faith, and with his wife’s opposing views, they had to make a choice, he said.
“I said well, here’s the situation. There’s a fork in the road now. I want to follow the LORD, and you want to stay in the world. So she wasn’t going to support me following the LORD, and I wasn’t going to support her following the world. So we took the ‘Y’. She went her way and I went my way.”
What followed was another time of tribulation.
“It hurt me, because I gave my heart to her. But she didn’t give her heart to me. So it didn’t hurt her that much, but it was demolishing me.”
In response:
“I started gettin’ into trouble and doing things that I felt awful inside. ‘Cause that wasn’t me, I wasn’t like that. I was like, I don’t wanna do those things. I don’t want to gamble, I don’t wanna do this, I don’t wanna do that. But I did it out of spite. And afterwards, it had a bitter taste in my mouth. I’m like, that’s not me, I don’t wanna do that.”
Ultimately, his faith brought him through that dark period, he said.
“I stopped, I stopped everything. And I said you know what? I want to pursue—’cause now that the LORD has been healing me from those wounds, I said I want to do everything I can to find out the truth.”
SO NOW I SIT BACK AND LISTEN TO EVERYBODY SAYING OH, THE STOCK MARKET’S THIS, AND THIS, AND THAT. AND I TURN AROUND AND I SEE THE TREES DYING.
He headed to Chicago for a fresh start. Galvanized by his strengthening faith and relationship with God—and forever disillusioned with money—he began living homeless and devoting his time and energy to studying the Bible. He even preached a little on the streets.
“It was really neat, ‘cause I was standing in front of the R– building. This is like downtown area, so I started preaching there and people like it. So next thing you know, I was recorded on ABS, WGN, just kept coming by.”
He started to garner a following. However, he attracted the wrong kind of attention as well, he said.
“I was invited to a gathering, and the Jesuits poisoned my food. That’s how bad it got. It was a large crowd, a large people that was following me, even on social media. And I almost died. [The city officials] were pushing me out. I got to know a lot of dark secrets about Chicago. And I stayed until the LORD said, ‘It’s time to go.’”
He moved to Austin afterwards, and continues to spend every day in Bible study and research.
He’s preached in Austin once, he said:
“I was like, you know what? I’m gonna go into UT, I’m gonna stand right there in the middle and tell all the students how much the LORD loves them, and that He wants them to know this. So when I went in there and did that, people were like, ‘Really? This is happening?’ ‘Cause they’re so focused, so in tune, and they’re only looking at their studies, they don’t have time to focus on the other things.”
Again, he attracted unwanted attention: he suspects a higher motive of the authorities to insulate the university students.
“The UT police were pushing me out. In other words, they’re trying to keep all this away from them (the students). They don’t want them to know this.”
However, he was encouraged a few days later.
“I was tying my shoes on the sidewalk. One of the UT students pulled up in his car—he was waiting at the stoplight. He had his window rolled down, and he turned around and he said, ‘Thank you.’ Because he didn’t know this. And inside I was just crying.”
Besides general preaching on God’s love, he’s favored three topics when speaking on the streets.
1. The Importance of Women
“I like to talk about the strength women have.”
He believes women should preach in the church. His message on the subject:
“When Jesus was writing on the temple ground, they brought the woman of adultery—and they threw her at his feet and they said, “Look we caught this woman. The law of Moses says this, and blah, blah, blah.” And what he does there is so incredible because he shows Judgement Day right there. ‘Cause when he got up he judged everyone. He didn’t just look at her, he looked at everyone. He said, look at yourselves. You’re not doing your own checks and balances.
And when they realized that, they said well, how are we to say she’s any better or worse than us. And when they all left and she was there standing… the beautiful thing is that when God creates something, he creates it as whole. It’s part of the body. it’s part of His creation. So when he created male and female, he created them to be whole. In His likeness.
So when he looked at her and spoke to her, he looked at two things. He looked at not only her, her physical body, but he looked at his bride, which is inside her soul. So he said, is anyone here to judge you? And she says there’s no one left, sir. And he says well, I will not judge you either. And he was talking about his bride that’s inside her. She will not be judged, because she’s blameless. So now he looked at the physical part of her and said, ‘Sin no more.’
So he’s looking at both things there. And that’s something that people aren’t looking at, because that goes for everyone. He’s the groom, and she’s the bride, and when he comes in, that completes the matrimony. When the LORD wrote through Paul, “Do not let a woman preach,” he was referring to the woman there, his bride, who hasn’t received the groom yet—Jesus. So therefore it’s still the person preaching, not Jesus through her. So once you receive Jesus, now it IS Jesus preaching through you—you may preach! Because now you become the male. He is the male through you.”
He said that he’s frustrated by some churches’ inflexibility on the subject.
“What happens is that when it comes into a gathering of people, when they’re trying to read it literally, that’s when they put in tradition. And I’m like, set your tradition aside. I don’t want to hear that. Not too long ago, the Pope said he’s not going to have any woman preacher. But basically we’re all part of the body. And if you’re treating this part of the body less, then how balanced can you be?”
2. The Meaninglessness of the Rat Race
His other favorite message is the result of his relentless, continuing research into Biblical topics, he said. His discoveries were prompted by his new lifestyle, which gave him new perspective on the world, he said.
“Everyone wants to seek for profit and gain. Everybody’s hungry to become rich. Everyone’s hungry for the new technology. Everyone’s hungry for more. More. That’s the drive. When you go to school, and go to college, that’s the drive. They have the drive of an image to be like the Joneses, to be corporate elite, to be CEO, to be head this, to be the biologist that discovered the cure for Ebola. You got this drive—people are hungry. Then people who are rich telling you, ‘I became rich because I knew what to do with my money. Now give me your money because I know what to do with your money: you don’t.’
And you’re like, when is it enough? They have drawn this image, and it’s not real, because once they’ve reached that level, there’s always more. This is where people’s drive and their soul is at. That’s why they don’t see anything else.
And I remember because I was once there too when I was young. I wanted to make a lot of money and I did. But I was miserable. So now I sit back and listen to everybody saying oh, the stock market’s this, and this, and that. And I turn around and I see the trees dying.”
3. The Apocalypse
He became firmly attuned to the environmental changes around him that he felt others were ignoring.
“It’s already affecting the US. Droughts all over Georgia and Alabama. Droughts in California. A small town in Texas, their companies have closed too. Corporates are scared now, they’re writing letters to Washington because there’s not enough water to run their industrial factories.
But I realized that okay, I understand what [the scientists] saying, but there’s more to the story. The LORD said that he destroyed the first world with water. Yes. The LORD’s going to destroy the second world with fire. Okay. What’s rising in the atmosphere? That’s a fiery compound called CO2. Mm. Methane. Hm. Okay. Those are both compounds that ignite. Got it, fire. Okay. Down below, we got droughts. We got acidity in the water. We got oceans leaving more salt in the oceans, and fresh waters are being evaporated. Something’s different about the rain now. There’s acidity in the water. More fire. Salt in the ocean, more fire. The ocean current is slowing down. Huh. Ice caps are melting. Okay, are they only releasing ice? No. CO2 and methane. Fire. Ah! I got it! Exactly what the LORD said.
And then I was like, let me research the acidity levels in the atmosphere. India popped up. And I looked at the headlines. ‘Water Turned Red Like Blood in Rain in India.’ Why doesn’t the whole world know about this? So I popped it up, and there was a video next to it. They were saying, ‘It was so unusual. We heard these unusual thunders that we’ve never heard before. I mean, really loud. And one after another.’ It wasn’t normal, like a normal thunderstorm. Sometimes you see lightning throughout the sky, but they said this was different. I opened up the Bible, and when the LORD breaks the seal… there’s going to be loud thunders. There’s gonna be something that people have never seen before. And following these thunders, there will be clouds that are red, and it’s going to rain blood.
And I kept researching some more, and I realized that now that the acidity and methane are mixing up with the atmosphere, it’s causing the acidity levels of water to rise within the clouds, and it’s causing it to rain the color red. Blood. I’m like, this is happening. I see it. But nobody else is seeing it.
Say look, Science, I get what you’re doing. And yes, you’re trying to make humanity better. But I realized where you peaked. And I realized that there’s things that you’re not sharing with us. You have things like a politician—it’s not what I’m afraid what you’re sharing. It’s what you’re NOT sharing. And I realized ok, there’s more to the story here. And yes, I see what the LORD is doing.
If you notice, all the people and all the islands are moving inland. That’s bringing people closer together. You see all the people coming together now, inland. Now that’s producing more sicknesses, more diseases, famine, droughts. What is the LORD doing? Gathering all the people together. Why is he gathering us all together? Aha. That means Judgement Day is coming.
So now we have fire up above, and fire down below. We’re just waiting for the LORD to light the match.”
He said that he plans on spreading this apocalyptic news as soon as he can finalize several parts of his message.
He spends his days at libraries across Austin, researching, and at the Colorado River, praying, he said. When he begins to share his message, his primary goal is:
“Waking them up from their dream. Their sleep. If the LORD through me can accomplish that, amen. Because that will start saving lives.”
More than anything, he has an urgency to bring people to know Christ. His faith has been a huge part of his own life, he said.
“Jesus Christ is hope. It doesn’t make sense if I put hope in currency. It fluctuates so much. If I put hope on a flag, that’s dead. If I put hope on an image, that’s not real. I’m wasting my time. If I put hope on a candidate, I’m going to get disappointed. The LORD says, don’t lean on man: lean on me. So, this is why I put my hope in the LORD. Cause He IS hope, and there is no other.”
He wants to introduce that hope to others.