Born in 1985, Josef grew up in Toledo, Ohio, in a context that was far from amicable to the Christian faith. Though he was not raised with any instruction in the things pertaining to the Christian worldview, early on, he became painfully aware of the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of the mainstream, John Dewey-inspired educational system, eventually turning his back on it during his teenage years in pursuit of a deeper conception of the meaning of life. Once in Middle School, it became obvious that the public indoctrination system is altogether determined by social and political interests that do not have true education or critical thinking in view. Josef’s mind bucked against the system of education that was offered, which he saw as hollow, vain and perverse, as it was all utterly confined to the immediate, the immanent, the phenomenological, the natural and the carnal, to the exclusion of the beckoning of the voice that issued from Above.

Questions like, “Who am I,” “Why am I here,” “What is the meaning and purpose of life,” and “What is Truth,” burned in his heart and cried out for answers. He recalls a recurring habit of going out into the fields of Ohio at night, gazing up at the stars, and asking, “Is there any ultimate reality beyond this?” This deep-rooted longing to be filled with the truly meaningful was left unsatisfied by the corn husks of this world. Although unable to articulate it at the time, his heart was resonating with the truth of what Blaise Pascal famously observed: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.”

Leading up to this was a habit he had developed since the age of ten of reading the Bible, ruminating on it throughout the day, and praying and fasting over its words on a regular basis. All this was motivated by a dreadful sense of emptiness within him and a desire to connect with transcendent and ultimate reality, which he knew could only be found in God. His journey to Truth and meaning and purpose, he thought, had to be charted by independent initiative, apart from the mainstream narratives about the origins of life. There had to be a deeper meaning to the reason for our existence, beyond that offered by the biology teachers who taught that we are naught but sophisticated apes.

But a season of suffering, leading to prevailing depression and resentment at his lot in life, eventually led him to skepticism about the things of God. As the bitterness within consumed him, he became a pronounced atheist, seeking to suppress the claims of the Bible and to expel them from his thoughts. The conflict between the Bible’s portrayal of a benevolent God and the reality of life’s misery seemed incompatible.

But the beckoning call from Above, felt so keenly within, could not be silenced. Out of curiosity, he began to investigate the “dark side” of religion, learning about occultism and associated spiritual phenomena in which is manifest a conspicuous and undeniable supernaturalism. This led him to realize that the material realm is superseded by a spiritual realm in which malevolent entities exist who are characterized by personality, intelligence, and communicative abilities, thus becoming persuaded of the superficiality and short-sightedness of atheism and secularism. He then reasoned that if malevolent entities certainly exist beyond the realm of sense perception, what about the good?

This led him to study the Bible anew with a critical but open mind. As he wrestled with many doubts, his study led him to the discovery of several features of the Bible that evince its origins in a supernatural source which transcends space and time. First was the phenomenon of typology which is embedded in the biblical history. Patterns that bear Christological contours in Old Testament passages, like Abraham’s offering of Isaac in Genesis 22, point to the centrality of Jesus Christ as the focal point of human history. Second was the interconnectedness of the biblical text. Despite its diversity of human authorship, the text is unified in its revelation of a coherent system of philosophy, theology, and ethics, pointing to its origin in the singular mind of God. Third was the presence of biblical prophecy. Historical prophecies such as the prediction that Cyrus would overthrow the Babylonian empire, and Messianic prophecies that are fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth, finally convinced Josef that the God of the Bible is the one true God, and that He exists as the Personal Absolute, the God of Truth and goodness and righteousness, the ontological Trinity, who is the Author of creation, providence, and redemption.

It wasn’t until the spring of 2004, however, that Josef came to experience the redeeming love of God in a personal way. Earlier that year, for the first time in his life, he began attending a Bible-preaching church. The encounter transpired on Resurrection Day (Easter), in the morning, while sitting under a sermon about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Josef understood that Christ had not only died for him, but rose for him, and that in Christ’s life, he had new life, a new beginning, and a new hope. He believed not only that Jesus had died for sinners, but had died and rose for him, personally and vicariously.

He describes the experience as a removal of the veil that separates the noumenal from the phenomenological, ushering him into an unspeakable experience that brought his consciousness into existential encounter with the Transcendent. A sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence surged through his interior, eliciting profuse weeping, a brokenness brought about by a profound sense of sin but also a captivating sense of God’s holiness and love and grace and majesty. He was melted by God’s ineffable love in Christ and understood that he was saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for God’s glory alone. He came to behold the invisible Christ through the eye of faith, as Peter described when talking about the Lord, “whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8–9).

From that time on, Josef was transformed. His thinking experienced a radical shift whereby all things came to revolve around the axiom that God is the ground of being, knowledge, truth, morality, beauty, consciousness, and indeed, life itself. His conscience was freed from the crushing burden of guilt. The disposition of his heart became disinclined to the sins he once loved. He immediately developed an insatiable appetite for the Holy Scriptures, which he has studied almost daily since that time alongside commentaries from ancient and modern writers. He prayed that the Lord would take his life and make it useful, and shortly after his conversion, Josef felt that the Lord was calling him to devote his life to the ministry of the Word.

Josef has served in full-time ministry in one capacity or another since 2005. For several years, he was involved in street ministry in inner city Detroit, where he encountered the brokenness of human nature manifestly exhibited in tragic ways. For ten years, he was a missionary in Latin America. He pastored a church in one of Latin America’s megacities for eight years, has been involved in evangelism, publishing, and several church plants, has itinerated as a conference speaker, and has labored in training men to be teachers and preachers of the Word. He is the author of several books which were published in Spanish in Latin America and has been published in the Puritan Reformed Journal in addition to other mediums. He has also served professionally an editor for academic papers and as a research assistant (TA) to staff at a nationally accredited Christian seminary.

One of Josef’s ongoing burdens is to evangelize in our post-Christian culture by addressing the issues that people are facing with the timeless truths of the Holy Scriptures. Along these lines, he recognizes that one the greatest dearths faced by the church and society-at-large is biblical illiteracy, a realization that has brought him to focus on teaching the Bible as a theological treasury that centers on Christ and has vast implications for all of life. His years on the mission field led him to observe that one of the greatest needs of the global church is for in-depth biblical and theological training, especially for leadership. This had led him to serve in projects that are conducive to equipping men with the knowledge and tools they need to labor effectively in the service of God’s global kingdom.