This testimony includes a suicide attempt. If you are struggling, please reach out to a crisis line in your country or to someone you trust today. You are not alone.
Kim Keel stepped over something dark and found herself in a desert. It was not heaven, and it was not hell. The ground was dry sawdust. There was golden light but no sun. And standing behind a white picket fence was Jesus.
Twenty-four years later, Kim is an ordained pastor who leads an online church called We Are Jesus Doers. In this episode of the God’s Truth Podcast, she tells Abigail Smith what she saw at that fence, why it took her eighteen years to understand it, and what she believes the Lord has shown her about the days ahead. What follows is her account.
Doors, from the very beginning
Kim describes herself as a loud, blunt Virginia biker. She says she was once so full of rage that she was banned for life from just about every bar in the state for fighting. But her story starts much earlier, and it keeps coming back to doors.
At three, she saw three tall, thin figures standing in her bedroom doorway, just staring at her. At seven or eight, a broken finger on a school trip led doctors to a tumour in the bone, which they removed. She had never heard about God, yet she simply knew He had saved her life. At nine, soon after she began riding a church bus to a small Pentecostal church and praying for her mother to be saved, she felt fingers grip her ankles and drag her off her bed. She kicked and fought. Then her bedroom door burst open, the pulling stopped, and she heard a battle raging at the door. When it ended, a sparkling, sunlit haze filled the room, and a deep peace came over her. She knew God had won.
Only years later, after she was saved, did she read that Jesus calls Himself the door (John 10:9). She believes the enemy had been trying to block the door to her calling since she was a toddler.
Witchcraft, and a prophecy she laughed at
As an adult, Kim went deep into the occult. She joined a coven and became a skilled tarot reader. When she decided to quit, she says, her Ouija board spelled out curses at her. She took it back to the toy store for a refund. A heavy, dark presence then kept her out of her own bedroom. She felt fingers running through her hair as she tried to sleep on the couch, and once she believes she was lifted toward the ceiling.
In her twenties, a friend dragged her to church to hear a visiting prophet, Bobby Brown. He called her out of the back pew. Kim thought he was full of baloney until he told her the Lord saw her coming home and crying without knowing why. That was exactly what she had been doing all week. He warned that the devil would try to take her life, that family members would turn their backs on her, and that if she gave her life to God, He would be her strong army and use her to reach many people. Decades later, Kim tracked him down to tell him every word had come to pass.
She was prayed for, and at a large healing crusade she was set free from a spirit of witchcraft. But no one discipled her, and she soon fell away. It is why she is so insistent on discipleship today. As Jesus warned in Matthew 12:43–45, an empty house does not stay empty.
At the fence
About twenty-four years ago, deep in addiction and full of guilt over things she had said and done while drunk, Kim tried to end her life. Her last thought was that she knew she was going to hell.
Instead, she found herself in that desert. Her mother, who was still alive at the time, stood beside her and pointed toward a barn. “Look,” she said, “there’s Jesus.” Behind a white picket fence sat a boy of about twelve on a stump, teaching a group of men who leaned in, spellbound. Kim could not understand why Jesus looked like a child. Much later she read of the twelve-year-old Jesus teaching the elders in the temple (Luke 2:46–47).
She walked along the fence to the last post. As she lifted her foot, a voice behind her said: “One more step and you will be out of darkness, and you’re not coming back.” She turned and saw Jesus as a man. The first thing she noticed was His nose, which was long, very long. For years she felt embarrassed by that detail. Then a viewer pointed out that in Hebrew, being “long of nose” is an idiom for being slow to anger, the very phrase God uses of Himself in Exodus 34:6.
He stared at her silently while she berated herself: you blew it, Kim. Then He bowed His head, smiled the most beautiful smile, reached across the fence and laid His hand on her shoulder. “I forgive you,” He said. “You’re going to teach the people My word.” She did not even know the Bible was called the Word. Behind His robe she noticed His arm, strong and muscular, and later understood that she had seen the strength that would carry her through everything to come.
The fence never came down. They stayed on opposite sides the whole time. After she was saved, she understood it as her sin, the separation described in Isaiah 59:2. Jesus could remove it with a breath, she says, but the choice to come was hers. The dry, empty barn was her life, and she believes it is a picture of Lo Debar, the barren place where Mephibosheth lived before the king sent for him (2 Samuel 9:4–5).
An ocean of people who said “Lord, Lord”
In the desert, Kim says she was also shown something that still drives her ministry: an ocean of people stretching in every direction, all claiming to be Christians, all heading to hell. She could hear them roaring about what they had done in His name, and she heard the answer: “I don’t know you.”
About a year after she was saved, she was reading Luke 13:22–27 and nearly fell out of her chair: “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many… will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.” She had seen it before she ever read it. It is why, she says, her church is no “romper room.” Salvation is a relationship to be lived, not a prayer to be said once (Matthew 7:21–23).
The day every door closed
Kim came back, vomiting and shaken. The next morning her older sister, who knew nothing, called to say she had dreamed of Kim burning in hell. Still, Kim ran from God for years.
Her family was everything to her. Her mother, she admits, was her god. Within one week in April 2020, her stepfather died and then her mother. The night before her mother died, Kim cursed God with everything she had. The next morning, a fragrance she had smelled a handful of times since childhood filled her whole house, stronger than ever. “He’s here,” she told her husband. That same day, with no explanation she knows of to this day, she lost contact with the rest of her family.
That afternoon, contemplating ending her life again, she laid it all down and fell face first into the mud of her front yard. “Here I am. I’m all Yours,” she said. That was 24 April 2020, the day she was saved. Only then, she says, did understanding of the desert begin to switch on.
She now sees what happened through Exodus 12:12. Just as the plagues were judgments against the gods of Egypt, God removed the idols in her life until it was only Him and her. That first year He kept her in solitude and taught her to pray and to forgive. Two and a half to three years later, her siblings began coming back one by one. Today her sister says Kim is a different person.
What she says Jesus has shown her
Kim believes the Lord has continued to show her things to come, and she has her ministry assistant write them down. Among them:
- A great earthquake. She says she saw a huge, deadly earthquake in the Middle East, along with the number eight. Eight months later to the day, she says, the February 2023 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, killing more than 50,000 people.
- War involving Iran. About six years ago, she says, she saw old-style bomber planes and a conflict between Iran and America, with Russia and China standing behind Iran.
- Floods and droughts at once. She believes they are signs of the rise of the beast system before the Lord returns, and of a spirit of confusion.
As with any prophetic word, we encourage readers to weigh these claims against Scripture and test them, as 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21 instructs. Kim would agree. Her constant message to her church is not to believe her, but to get into the Word and let the Holy Spirit teach them.
An ant with an eighth-grade education
Kim never went to high school. She calls herself an ant that God picked up off the ground, and loves Proverbs 6:6: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard.” She once expected a church building. Instead, God put her online, because that is where the sick are, and the sick need a doctor (Mark 2:17). Her church of more than fifty people meets five nights a week, with homework, Shabbat study and a strong emphasis on discipleship, because, she says, people are getting saved but not discipled.
The labourers are few, Kim says, and the people are starving. Her plea is the same one she heard at the fence: strive to enter the narrow gate, and do not just call Him Lord. Know Him.
Connect with Kim Keel
- YouTube: We Are Jesus Doers
- Website and online church: jesusdoers.com
Mentioned in this episode
- We Are Jesus Doers, Kim’s online church, which meets five nights a week for teaching and discipleship
- Prophet Bobby Brown, who prophesied over Kim in Norfolk, Virginia, decades ago
Scriptures in this episode
- John 10:9, I am the door
- Luke 2:46–47, the boy Jesus teaching in the temple
- Exodus 34:6, longsuffering, the Hebrew idiom of a long nose
- Isaiah 59:2, your iniquities have separated you from your God
- 2 Samuel 9:4–5, Lo Debar
- Luke 13:22–27, strive to enter in at the strait gate
- Matthew 7:21–23, not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord
- Matthew 12:43–45, seven other spirits more wicked
- Exodus 12:12, judgment against the gods of Egypt
- Jeremiah 1:5, before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee
- Revelation 6:10–11, “How long, O Lord?” and time in heaven
- Proverbs 6:6, go to the ant
- Mark 2:17, they that are sick need a physician
- 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21, prove all things
Watch the full testimony
Now hear it in their own words. Press play to watch the full conversation on the God’s Truth Podcast.
Go deeper
Has God given you a testimony? Share it with us. Want to go further? Become a member, or join our free Christian community.
Read more testimonies like this one on The Record.