Testimony Tuesday: Audrey Tyson (Part 1/3)

She thought she was finally doing life right: Army at 17, law enforcement, marriage, a home, a new baby. Then grief and collapse came fast a child’s death in the family, a marriage unraveling under trauma, finding her father dead from opioid addiction, and losing the career she loved. When everything stacked up, Argerie Tyson didn’t tell a polished story. She told the honest one.

We talk with her about growing up with addiction, violence, and sexual abuse, and how that kind of trauma can twist your sense of trust, safety, and relationships for years. She shares what it was like trying to “fix herself” through self-help and New Age spirituality, why it seemed peaceful at first, and the frightening moment she describes as a glimpse of what separation from God feels like. The turning point is simple and unforgettable: she finds a Bible, calls on the name of Jesus Christ, and the terror lifts.

From there, we dig into discernment and doctrine: why she believes witchcraft and the prosperity gospel run on the same engine of works and control, and why the real miracle isn’t health, wealth, or a better “manifested” life, but God raising the spiritually dead by grace. If you care about biblical Christianity, spiritual warfare, leaving the New Age, and the sovereignty of God in salvation, you’ll find both warning and hope here.

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with a friend who needs clarity, and leave a review so more people can find it. What part of her journey hit closest to home for you?

Transcript

Welcome And Testimony Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:01

All right. Christians. We have Argerie Tyson. Our sister Tyson giving her testimony this Tuesday night. We've been looking forward to this for a couple of weeks now at least. And I will turn it over to our sister Tyson to start telling us about her experience coming to Christ and how it all came about. So Tyson, you got the floor, sister.

Army Years And Becoming An Officer

Loss, Divorce, And Life Falling Apart

New Age Detour And Spiritual Terror

Calling On Jesus And Rejecting Prosperity

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Yes. First, I want to say thank you for having me and thank you all for being here. Even caring to hear my testimony. It's such a joy to fellowship with you guys. And I hope that my testimony can absolutely bring glory to God. So I will start. I'll give you the basics of childhood, family-wise, rough childhood. My parents were addicts, and it was it was rough growing up. To simplify, I was, I don't know if I can say the word grape, but I think y'all know what I'm talking about. A few different times by, you know, different different men and things like that. So once I hit 17, I realized, okay, I saw my mother and I saw my father, and I said, oh well, this, I know this is not what I want to do or be by the grace of God, because it could have went, it could have went a whole different way. And so I joined the army at 17 and meeting other adults, I realized my childhood was not normal, you know. So I I grew in my understanding of how traumatized I truly was, especially with my promiscuity, not understanding like what a relationship even is. I was always in a relationship. I've never been like single in my life to the point where if before one relationship ended, oh I had the next one, you know, like it was it was always layered. I've literally never been single. So I didn't understand what relationships were, and you know, I had no understanding of what God purposed a union for in the first place. So my promiscuity and my relationship, my idea of it was super twisted, really bad. You know, I watched my dad beat my mom up, she like knocked her teeth out with a vacuum cleaner. And so I'll start there at the divorce. I was four. And I just remember my dad chasing my mom around with a vacuum cleaner, and he whacked her in the face with it, knocked all of her teeth out, and she was trying to get to the door to let me and my brother out, and we got out, but she didn't. He grew he got a hold of her, and I don't really I was four, so I don't remember much happened after that. But my mom ended up divorcing my dad, moving me in with her parents, her mother and stepfather. And then that went south because he was a pedophile and molested and graped me for a couple years before I don't even know how my dad knew, but he was like, is he doing anything? Or, you know, my dad talked it out of me. And so I finally told him, and then you know, the law got involved. He never went to jail, but they did put me in like abused children, like foster classes and all that stuff. So, you know, from a young age, I grew to not trust authority to feel like nobody is going to protect me ever, not even my mother. My father, he tried, but he was also like an alcoholic, an addict, so he always put that first. So I never really had a sense of I could trust anyone, especially my parents. So I grew up, you know, in school. You know, teachers always talked about my potential, but they would also always talk about my hard head and how I don't listen. And so in high school, I ended up dating the neighborhood dealer, I guess is what he was. I don't know. But he was 26. I was 14. My mother moved him into our home. This man went to my prom with me. I don't know. When I think back about this, I'm like, how did that even happen? We were together four years, four years. And I asked my teacher, I had recently ran into my volleyball coach. I was a I was the captain of the volleyball team, and I was like, why did you allow that? Y'all knew he was a grown man, right? And she said that knowing my mother, at least he was getting me to school. So that'll kind of give you an idea of how bad probably it really was at my home for my teachers to allow this grown man to be in my life and not call the authorities on him. They, because apparently they had a discussion about it because he was coming to my volleyball games, he came to my prom. Like he was always involved. But they said, you know, at least he's getting her to, they just wanted me to graduate. So I did graduate and I ended up joining the army at 17. And then I started to realize, like, okay, my life is a little unnormal. This is not, this is not normal. So I started to process, you know, that he was abusive. He was putting his hands on me and stuff. So when I got back, I broke up with him and moved to Memphis with one of my sergeants. It was her, she was my sergeant over me, and she just wanted me to come live with her so she could like properly train me, I guess, on how to be a woman, because I never learned any of that or never taught me any of that stuff. And she was like, just come live with me. I was like, I was 17 when I joined, so I was 18 when I moved in with her, and she taught me a a lot that I was unaware of. So, you know, I ended up moving back into my regular town. I was gonna be a police officer because I didn't want any, like I never got into drugs, I never by the grace of God, I'm telling you, it was all by the grace of God. I never got involved in any of that stuff. I was really more focused on proving my worth to my mother, I think, and my father. So I really worked hard on doing doing the right thing. And so got involved with the police force. I was on the police force for four years and absolutely loved it. It was very stressful. But the sad thing is, is I would see a lot of my friends that I grew up with coming in addicted to methamphetamine, all these kind of crazy things. You know, and it it it was it was really weird to, you know, just sit back and and realize like, you know, that they didn't make it out. And so I always wondered, you know, I qu had questions about that, you know, how why did I make it out? And another reason why God's so sovereignty is comforting to me because it had nothing to do with me, and it doesn't mean that I'm special, but just the mercy and grace of Christ over someone's life, and I've always been thankful of that. So fast forward, I got married at 23. I got married to my first husband, and so I thought I was doing it big, you know. I was working at the sheriff's apartment, I had everything I needed, like I had cars and you know, house, whatever. I got married, and I didn't even have my first my first child. What was that? Um, I didn't even have my first child until I got married, so that was at 26. My son's right here. He was born when I was 26. So my first marriage, it lasted about four years, and this is the part that drove me to the feet of Christ. So this is like my favorite part of my testimony. So I was working at the sheriff department, I was married, and my dad, I moved across the street from my dad so I could take care of my dad. I moved my mom right beside me so I could take care of her because they were like my children, my parents were like my children. You know, I had to keep them out of trouble because they were, they were hippie heathers, right? So they were divorced, but you know, I at least got us in a little, we all had our own houses, but we were in like this little triangle, right? So, you know, a tragedy struck where our first, so my first, it was my bonus son, he was six years old. He was in the car with his mother. His mother was fleeing a domestic violence situation. She smacked into an 18-wheeler and it killed my first husband's son, and it was extremely traumatic. We had to fly out to, we had to go up to Memphis and view the body, and it was it was daunting. Like it was my son was three months old when this all happened, so it that's what started the the trickle of like one thing after another and like just everything falling apart. So when we lost Tristan, my husband like lost it, and I completely understand like you can't imagine something like that. Like this is a six-year-old child. It was rough, right? So he got into drugs and drinking real bad and putting his hands, fighting me all the time and stuff. So at some point I had to, I had to step away and protect my son, who was between three months to a year, right? It was a lot of abuse going on, and and I just didn't want him involved with it. I saw that I saw that my first husband was really letting letting everything go and uh you know offering therapy and he didn't want none of that. So just to protect my son, I went ahead and stepped away from that relationship. And then a few days later, my dad across a street. I hadn't heard from him in a couple days, and so I go here to harass him, right? I'm going to peck on his windows and doors, and I'm working at the sheriff's farm, and so I call them and I'm like, Can I break in? Like, am I gonna get in trouble if I break in here? And they're like, Yeah, like we'll come do it professionally. So they come and I thought he was hibernating like on sleeping pills or something, and they busted in, and sure enough, we found his body. He was addicted to opioids, and apparently there was a big epidemic in America where all the doctors like shut off the opioid stuff, so he started turning to heroin, which I was completely unaware of. So when I found his body, it was very shocking. I fell to the ground. So first it was Tristan, then it was my dad. And then the divorce, and then um I was at work and my mom had got arrested. Bless her soul. She was a klepto, she liked to just steal random things, you know. And I I guess I don't know, they brought her in for theft. And so she was a diabetic though, so they put me in a really sticky spot. Like, I'm like at work and my mom's like in the cell, like down the hallway. And, you know, I bonded her out, right? I'd had no idea that we were not supposed to bond people out if we worked there, and so my captain came up to me. I had worked there four years. My captain came up to me. He said, Did you bond your mom out? And I was like, Yeah. And I didn't know. And he was like, We have to terminate you. And I was like, Oh, like, oops, you know, and I asked, I was like, Where in the policy does it say that? Because that sounded a little weird, and it wasn't in the policy, so I just took it that God knew what he was doing and he was getting me out of there for whatever reason. So I didn't argue, I just was like, okay, bye. But that was heartbreaking because I really I was good at that career. I was really good as an officer, I was good at my job and I loved it, so it was heartbreaking because I planned on like making a huge career out of that. So I had my bonus son who passed away, my divorce, my father finding him, my career's gone. Like I literally lost everything, and it was a trying, very trying time. I had my one-year-old son at the time, and so it was like just a whole new pick up everything and start over. So I ended up finding this girl, and this is very important because spiritual new age is extremely dangerous, and I'll tell you why. But it sounded so good at first, right? Because you think of witchcraft, you see it on TV, and it looks all evil, but that's not how the devil presented it to me. He presented it to me very, very good in nature, very loving and peaceful in nature, right? And it was a snare from the pit of hell that snared me. I was so broken after all of these things that had happened to me. I went on a Joel Osteen, Steven Burdick, self-help run me show, right? And so for three years, I was reading all these self-help books and how to heal from all these from my childhood rapes and from this and from that and everything, like everything that had happened. And so I'm dabbling in witchcraft, basically. Call, you know, it was self-help. That's the word that was it's presented as to make it sound better, but you know, it's doing like just trying to figure out how to heal yourself, and it sounds innocent, but it's not, and it will it will take you down a road that ends up in a very, very dark, dead end, and it had there's no ending, right? I had an experience where the I had a whole sister circle, kind of like how I fellowship with you guys. I had a whole sister circle, and we were all like praying to trees or whatever for peace and love and light. It's like, what are we doing? Anyway so I had a very weird experience where a confusion came over me. I was on the phone with them, and this weird confusion came over me. And I'm gonna tell you what it felt like. It felt like a very, very small snippet of being what separation from God feels like. To me, it was the worst thing I've ever experienced in my life. But I I know that it's only a piece of what hell will be separation, separation from God. And so I was on my face crying in tears. Like it felt like I was losing my mind, I guess is what the best way you could say. So I called my sisters and I'm like, what do I do? They're like, pour salt around you. So I'm pouring salt. I don't know, I'm just pouring salt. It didn't work. You know what did work? I don't know why, but by the grace of God, of course, I ran and found a Bible in in my in my attic. I didn't even have a Bible out. I went searching, I knew that there had to have been one in the attic. So I I found this big family Bible, and I threw that sucker open and I called on the name of Jesus and I said, if you're real God, please save me. And that feeling immediately left me, and it's never been back. And I've been shouting the name of Jesus ever since, slowly but surely. This is why I think prosperity churches are so dangerous. I I went straight for the prosperity church because it literally reminded me of the witchcraft I was in. Oh, well, if you believe good enough, God will give you this and that. If you tithe this, God will give you that it's all on your works, your works, your works, same thing as witchcraft, same thing as all everybody else. Everybody else that trusts in their own works, right? And so that's the same thing the prosperity churches are doing. So I stayed there for a little while, never learned the gospel, you know. It wasn't until I started, I ran across R.C. Sproul, Paul Washer, I ran across those guys from a video, American Gospel. Y'all probably remembered it was a few years back. And I started to actually read for myself, like study and read. And I had read um John 15, where Jesus rebuked the woman that was coming to ask her for bread. This little lady, after he feeds the 5,000, this little lady, she comes, she's asking him for bread. And Jesus was like, You come to me to get your fill of loaves. Don't search for physical food, but the eternal. And it hit me right then, like, oh, prosperity gospel is heresy. Like, I gotta study more. And so I started to actually like read the Bible, and and so I well, when I was first introduced to like real Christianity, it was God's sovereignty, R.C. Sproul, the these kind of Vody uh Bauckham, all these guys. So I never had an issue. It never, but I knew that I was dead in my sin, fully dead in my sin, not seeking God. I was not seeking God when he snatched me up, you know, and it was only by his grace that I called Abba Father, that I called his name, right? It was only by his grace and mercy that I was even able to know to call his name. And so it just brings God's sovereignty, really just brings me to my knees over and over and over because I know that I was in the hands and mercy of him only, right? And he saved me, he saved me, and so I ended up meeting Michael a few years later, and we had Noah, so I have three children now, and so by the grace of God, he is a provider and he does work. So been under God's good graces to not have to physically go into facility to work. And for the past five years, I've literally been studying the Bible. God has given me the grace to just have space to mother my children and um study the Bible diligently, which I do. That's why I love y'all so much because y'all are just as just as crazy as me when it comes to we gotta know, we gotta study, we gotta read, we gotta talk about it. So y'all have been such a blessing in my life. And also, you know, the sickness that I've been dealing with, it's hard for me to kind of get to physical church. So y'all have legit come become my real family, my real church. And I just I love all of you. And God is God is good to wake up anyone, and so I'm blessed to know that the miracle, right? The miracle is eternal life through the righteousness of Christ. The miracle is when he wakes up a dead person, right? The miracle is not cars, clothes, this and that. It's when he wakes up the dead, like he really does that, and so it's just encouraging to hear you guys witnessing the people, sharing y'all's testimony, sharing the gospel. And even on Dizzy's Live, I've we've been seeing a lot of people coming in and ask questions. And actually grasp God's sovereignty, like ask questions, as many heretics as we get, of course. But there are those moments where God gives us, grants us, right? The ability to see people coming, his sheep being called, and they're actually coming forth. And we get to witness the miracle of that. And it's an honor to just get to witness with that with all of you guys. And I think that's about it.

SPEAKER_03 22:33

What? I'm ready for the sequel already. Let me ask you a question. Just you talked you talked about you made a comparison between the prosperity church and witchcraft. Now I know you said it has a lot to do with works, but but help me understand the similarities from your perspective, how you saw it. What were the real similarities?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, so the prosperity gospel preach about health, wealth, and financial gain, that that is the goal, the same as witchcraft. They believe that you're to elevate to your best self, which would be health, wealth, and financial. So there was a lot of similarities when it came to those comparisons, and that it's up to you to achieve it. So in the prosperity gospel, if you have enough faith, if you have the right prayer, if you tithe enough, if you serve enough, if you serve in the nursery enough, God will favor you more. So it just went right back to the same witchcraft that I was used to. At I I'm responsible for fixing all of this. You know, and and in the witchcraft, when I got to the top of the top, I realized that I couldn't do it. I did everything. Everything that you you would think about self-help, oh, I did it, and I still couldn't achieve it. Right? Because it's by the grace of God. So that is why I see the prosperity gospel and witchcraft is it's it's just witchcraft with Jesus sprinkled on top, is what it is.

SPEAKER_00 24:18

I just wanted to ask you, was it Wicca that you were in, or was it some other kind of witchcraft?

SPEAKER_01 24:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

I I was studying all of it. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

I just Hinduism, yoga, like all that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

I had a friend that was my next door neighbor, and she was into Wicca, and she did all that stuff with stones and you know, they had all this stuff that they did all the time, and now that I know that it's wrong, you know, because at the time I didn't know. And uh so that's why, you know, I that's why I was asking. God bless you that you came out of it.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yeah, yeah, I would encourage you. I mean, if she's open to it, some people are pretty shut off, but she would be somebody you might want to tell them the gospel to for sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

I haven't talked to her in years. Oh, okay. It was an old neighbor.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

So you said in in his witchcraft that you reached the top of the top, right? Yeah. So what what was the top? What was that?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

So there's levels to it, I guess you you know, just as anything else. And it gets to a point where you're you're so you're basically manipulating the everything around you to create the reality that you want. So, and you can do that, right? I and that that's what threw me because I realized, oh, this stuff is real, right? You know, when you think that it's not real and you see, like actually you're able to manipulate your own reality and get what you want, you're like, hey, this stuff is real. Maybe it's the truth. That's why I I I must tell people like this stuff is very real, but it's not of God. It is of Satan himself from the pit of hell, right? So, because when we tell people, oh, that stuff's not real, and then they see it for their eyes that it is very real. It for me, I was like, well, maybe it's the truth. Because this is real. So no, I'm here to tell you it is very real, but it's of the devil, and it will it will take you down the wrong way.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Right. Now you said you said your first on a your first encounter with biblical truth was with RC Sproul. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 26:31

That wasn't the first. So I could I know that God has been drawing me from birth because you know, over like I remember six years old, my our neighbors would come pick me up and take me to Bible study as like a kid. Like little things like that. I went to church. My grandmother went to church, she would take me here and there. But when