Testimonial Response to the Extreme Lives for Extreme Times Book

(by Bill Stevenson, February 1, 2006)

I was raised in the First Congregational Church in Redwood City, California. It had the
best-looking church sanctuary I have ever seen in my life of almost 60 years, but it had no good
Bible teaching or discipleship. I have been in many different denomination churches since and
in all of them the discipleship was completely lacking and in just a few of them was there good
Bible teaching. I had the same conclusion in what I have seen of television and radio ministries.
I have only been a part of about 10 good Bible/discussion home groups and a few good Bible
discussion Sunday school classes. I have not seen Titus 2 at all. So I never was properly
discipled. I was given leadership positions when I was not ready for them because of lack of
Bible knowledge and understanding. But the Holy Spirit did disciple me most of the time and
thus I have come to the conclusions and concerns that are in Bob Chapman’s book Extreme
Lives for Extreme Times-- Living for -Jesus in the 21st Century. I highly recommend that any
serious Christians read that book. It may be too late to encourage true discipleship world-wide,
but we can increase such in helping others to be ready for the fulfillment of 1 Corinthians 15.
I did not get personally into the Bible until two huge unexpected upsets in my life:
One involved two employment terminations in July 1967 and April 1968 because of
decisions by a few individuals in the United States Navy and the Secret Service. Receiving an
undeserved rough interrogation (even though it resulted in an Honorable Discharge) and being
forced into a Mental Institution because I visited the White House West Gate Secret Service post
made me realize that “the American Dream” ideals I had been taught in school were mostly not
true. I was a loyal American citizen who was not against the Vietnam War. I was still a shy
introvert and didn’t know any of the Bible to share. I thought that there was fairness in the
United States military services and I even was thinking of making the United States Navy a
career because I heard that they had Education Research going on. I also thought that maybe I
could play the piccolo in one of its bands. I went to Washington D. C. in December of 1967 to
discover why 45% of my high school graduation class gave up in their attending of college. In
the United States History and Government courses, I was taught that the Federal Government
workers and politicians were public servants and fair in their judgments. After experience with
the Secret Service, if I hadn’t been “born again” on May 25, 1967, I would have had a mental
breakdown from which I probably would not have recovered from. The Holy Spirit informed me
why the two Navy Petty officers and the Secret Service agent did what they did against me. In
the San Jose State College Fall Semester of 1968, I told Jim Edwards (who became the first
Black student body president ) about my experiences in the San Diego Navy Boot Camp and in
Washington D. C. He asked me why I was still “straight”. I said the famous statement, “Two
wrongs don’t make a right.” He respected my diligence in using the New College experiment for
seeking knowledge and understanding to try to discover solutions to the problems in Education
and Government. During that semester, I made my own independent studies to learn about the
sociology of the 1950s and 1960s, religious ministries, and the Gospel of John. The latter was
my first real study of any of the Bible and it resulted in a 55-page response for which I received
an “A”.
The second upset involved the October termination of my first full time ministry in a small
school for not giving a second grader the straight “A”s her mother was expecting and because I
had not “spoken in tongues” yet. I tried to give up the career in Christian education after that,
but got hired the next year to teach fourth grade in another Christian school. Before that new
employment opportunity happened, the Holy Spirit urged me to study Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and
the Epistles of Paul which resulted in some Bible study tools too. I also went to a 3-day Spiritual
Leadership Conference full of exhortations, studied some books about Biblical counseling, and

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read a book about a famous intercessory prayer warrior which encouraged me to do similarly
rather than read fiction books in my “free time”. I taught two years of fourth grade classes in a
Christian school supported by a very fundamentalist Baptist church. The latter and a wonderful
home Bible study group helped me to learn much more how to study and understand the Bible
for personal changes. And from September 1977 to June 1978, I got paid to do Bible study using
a logical formatting of indenting which gave me more Bible understanding than I would have
received from most Bible colleges or seminaries.
Thus it took two shocking upsets in my life, one related to the United States Federal
Government and the other related to the Education field, to get me to realize that I had to be a
true disciple of Jesus Christ and the Bible. Since my unusual Bible education time in 1968-1978,
I have had other upsets and betrayals but I have had many Romans 8:28 blessings that kept me
dedicated to my discipleship commitment. I continued to try to encourage others to have such a
commitment too instead of just being a church member. It is only because of the Holy Spirit and
God’s grace that I am still so committed to the Great Commission. But my moves had been for
ministry employment opportunities and later in hopes to experience Ephesians 5 marriage instead
of for true discipleship ministries. `I never found a place to be involved in true Christian
discipleship.
But I cannot undo or change the past and in my current situation in Germany, I am very
limited currently of doing what Mr. Chapman says in his book a true disciple should do. My
wife is letting me do an Internet ministry that is mostly for the second part of the Great
Commission. It excites me when other individuals who yearn to be true Christian disciples
contact me and I am able to give good advice and Bible study tools to them. Also I have become
aware of so much more about the world and the needs for intercessory prayer and discipleship
ministries. In the 2½ years I have been in Germany, I have been guided by the Holy Spirit to
create some wonderful Bible study tools, have been able to do a lot of spiritual encouraging after
church services, and led a Bible study with another couple. But such is not enough for me,
especially now that I have read Extreme Lives for Extreme Times. In keeping informed about
much of the news in the whole world, it seems to me that the Age of Grace could be ended soon.
I grieve about the truth of religion instead of discipleship dominating in most European and USA
churches that Mr. Chapman mentioned many times in the book. My wife and I finally found a
church that at least has two good Holy Spirit directed Bible teaching sermons a week and serious
prayer ministering after the Sunday service. When I was a church elder and school teacher, I
was not qualified; now that I am qualified to be a Biblical elder and Bible teacher, I do not have
the opportunity. I don’t know of any church or para-church ministry which is doing what Bob
Chapman’s book and the Bible says should be done for the Great Commission discipleship. I
hope that the Holy Spirit will soon guide my wife and me to be better disciples of Jesus Christ at
least.