How God Used Bruce Lee to Begin My Spiritual Journey to Jesus Christ

Most people don’t expect Bruce Lee to show up in a Christian testimony. But for me, he was the spark God used to ignite a spiritual journey that would eventually lead me to Jesus Christ — not the Jesus of cultural Christianity, not the Jesus of religious systems, but the living Christ Jesus revealed in Scripture.

This is my story.

Growing Up Religious, but Not Yet Knowing Christ

I was raised in the Roman Catholic tradition and attended a Catholic private elementary school from ages three to nine. That early exposure gave me a basic awareness of God, Jesus, and the Bible, but not a living faith. During my adolescence, I would sometimes attend local Baptist churches with friends from my neighborhood, but even then, I was more of a cultural Christian than a committed believer.

My real spiritual journey — the one that would eventually lead me to Christ — didn’t begin until I was nineteen, and strangely enough, it began with martial arts.

Bruce Lee, Kung Fu Theater, and the Birth of a Passion

My dad introduced me to martial arts in the late 70s and early 80s through the movies we watched together. We’d go to the theater or catch “Kung Fu Theater” on TV. The first martial arts movie I remember was A Force of One starring Chuck Norris. There was a kickboxing scene that made me think, I want to do that.

But everything changed when I saw Bruce Lee in Game of Death (1978). That was the moment I fell in love with martial arts. Bruce wasn’t just an actor — he was a force of nature. He became my first martial arts hero, and for a long time, my only one.

My parents couldn’t afford martial arts classes, so I did what many kids did: I tried to imitate everything I saw Bruce Lee do on screen. But my real training didn’t begin until junior high, when I started going to the local boxing gym after watching Mike Tyson destroy Larry Holmes live on HBO. Boxing became my first martial arts love — but deep down, I still wanted to kick, grapple, and move like the martial artists I saw in the movies.

UFC 1 and the Shattering of Martial Arts Illusions

Then came 1993.

I watched UFC 1: The Beginning, the first televised no‑holds‑barred event that pitted different martial arts styles against each other. It was raw, unfiltered, and unlike anything the world had seen, and it proved something revolutionary: ground fighting mattered, and Brazilian Jiu‑Jitsu could defeat size, strength, and traditional styles.

In that moment, the martial arts world changed forever.

But what struck me even more was how much this validated Bruce Lee’s philosophy. Long before the UFC existed, Bruce Lee had already rejected rigid styles and insisted that truth in combat was found in what worked, not in what was traditional. He believed there was only one reality of combat, and all styles were merely interpretations of that reality.

That idea stuck with me.

A Walk to the Boxing Gym That Changed Everything

One day, while walking to my local boxing gym, I noticed how many different church buildings were in my community — Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Catholic, and more.

And suddenly, a thought hit me:

There are so many different types of churches that all say they’re Christian, but they teach different things. There are also so many religions in the world. Is there a “one true religion”?

Just as Bruce Lee saw traditional martial arts styles as “limitations, not strengths,” I began to wonder if the same was true of religious systems. I wasn’t looking for Jesus — not yet. I was looking for the “system” He supposedly practiced. I wanted the “original,” the “pure,” the “true” religion.

That desire would lead me down a long and dangerous road — dangerous because I was biblically illiterate and theologically ignorant, because I didn’t know where to begin, and because, truthfully, I was more interested in pursuing my own selfish, sinful desires than in seeking Jesus Himself.

My curiosity was sincere, but my motives were misplaced. I was searching for truth without knowing the Truth.

Searching for the “One True Religion” — and Falling Into Error

My search for the “One True Religion” led me to explore Pentecostalism,  Islam, Mormonism, and eventually a cultic branch of Christianity known as Armstrongism. My introduction to Armstrongism came through someone very dear to me — my wife.

She had been a long‑time member of the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and lived through the doctrinal upheaval of 1995. When the WCG splintered, her family followed John Ogwyn into the Global Church of God (GCG), and later into the Living Church of God (LCG). By the time she and I began dating in 1999, Armstrongism was already deeply woven into her life and identity.

In 2004, I started attending church services with her. Naturally, I became increasingly exposed to Armstrongist teachings — and eventually, I embraced them myself. It felt like that famous scene in The Matrix when Neo was offered the red pill or the blue pill — except I chose the one that promised “truth,” only to discover later that it led me deeper into illusion. By 2005, I formally became a member of the Living Church of God (LCG), where I remained until 2015. 

I thought I had found the “one true religion" or "the Truth."

But I hadn’t found Jesus.

Not yet.

The Question That Changed My Life

In 2010, a close friend invited me to what he called a Bible study. In reality, it was a meeting designed to proselytize through the International Churches of Christ’s (ICOC) First Principles study series — the core recruitment tool of a high‑pressure, high‑control, destructive cult. My friend was unknowingly part of this system, sincerely believing he was helping me find truth, even as he himself was being spiritually manipulated by his “discipler.”

In the ICOC, every member is paired with a more “mature” member — a discipler — to “walk the walk” together. These discipling relationships involve regular meetings where members confess sins, seek advice, and receive correction to ensure their lifestyle aligns with ICOC expectations. The discipler functions as a spiritual authority figure, often directing major life decisions under the guise of accountability and spiritual growth.

The First Principles series itself is a tightly structured set of studies designed to draw people deeper into this hierarchical discipling model — a system that functions much like a multi‑level marketing pyramid. Each study builds pressure toward immediate compliance, emphasizing repentance, the cost of discipleship, and especially baptism as a requirement for salvation. It is presented as a path to truth, but in reality, it is a mechanism of control.

What followed in our meetings and correspondence was less a Bible study and more a theological confrontation. He wanted to convert me to his church’s doctrines, which then led me to want to convert him to mine. We debated intensely. Then he said something that pierced me to the core:

“Mario, I don’t want to know what your church teaches.

I want to know what you believe and why you believe it.”

That sentence exposed me.

It was the first time someone held up a mirror to my spiritual blindness — the same blindness that had led me down that dangerous road years earlier. I realized I didn’t actually know what I believed. I only knew what I had been taught to repeat. I was parroting doctrine, not living truth.

That moment was the beginning of the end of my involvement in Armstrongism — and the beginning of my journey toward Christ.

As I began examining my own beliefs — trying to understand what I believed and why I believed it — I also started researching the ICOC. Only then did I discover the full extent of its high‑pressure tactics, manipulative discipling structure, and cult‑like control. What I thought was supposed to be a simple Bible study was actually a recruitment attempt through their First Principles series, designed to draw people deeper into a hierarchical system where “disciplers” monitor and direct nearly every aspect of a member’s life.

Five Years of Unraveling Falsehood and Discovering Truth

From 2010 to 2015, God graciously led me through a process of examining the so‑called “evidence” used to support Armstrongist doctrines — hermeneutics, history, prophecy, archaeology, philology, etymology, genealogy, and even genetics. But the unraveling didn’t stop with academic investigation. I also began noticing contradictions coming directly from the pulpit — sermons preached by pastors and laymen, as well as teachings published in LCG literature.

These contradictions were not minor. They struck at the core of LCG’s doctrinal claims:

• Their alternative timeline and events for the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus

• Their unbiblical view of the Godhead

• Their insistence on British Israelism as a prophetic key

• And many other doctrinal inconsistencies

The more I compared these teachings with Scripture, the more the cracks widened. The Holy Spirit used these contradictions to expose the theological instability of Armstrongism and to draw me toward the truth of the Gospel.

The Spirit showed me that Armstrongism preached:

• a different Jesus

• a different gospel

• and a different spirit (2 Corinthians 11:4)

The truth became clear: Salvation is not found in a system. Salvation is found in a Savior — Jesus Christ alone.

It was painful to realize that the very system I had once defended with zeal was built on theological sand. 

As these contradictions accumulated, I felt compelled to call for theological reform within LCG — not out of rebellion, but out of a sincere desire for biblical integrity. Instead of addressing the concerns, LCG leadership suspended me from attending church services in 2015 for raising these issues.

That suspension became a defining moment. It made clear that reform was impossible within the system, and so, with conviction and clarity, I renounced Armstrongism and left LCG — and the entire Armstrong Church of God community — for good.

Three years later, the Lord powerfully led my wife to leave as well. She renounced Armstrongist theology and joined me in rebuilding our faith from the ground up. What followed was a challenging odyssey of healing, rediscovery, and spiritual reorientation — a journey we walked together, hand in hand.

Leaving LCG was emotionally and spiritually taxing. Exiting a cultic system means stepping into uncertainty. We wrestled with anxiety about family relationships, the loss of community, and the daunting task of reconstructing our theology. Yet through prayer, Scripture, and the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit, we navigated that maze and eventually found solace in the embrace of a new faith community.

From Cult to Calling: Seminary and Ministry

In 2018, I enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to deepen my understanding of Scripture and prepare for ministry. Not long after, I founded Truth Guard, an apologetics ministry dedicated to:

• Evangelism

• Counter‑cult outreach

• Discipleship

• And defending the faith through biblical apologetics

In a way, God even redeemed my early fascination with Bruce Lee — transforming that same drive for mastery, discipline, and truth into a calling to preach and defend the Gospel.

My mission is simple:

Lead people to the real Jesus — the One who saved me.

Conclusion: Bruce Lee Was the Spark, but Jesus Is the Savior

Looking back, it amazes me how God used someone as unexpected as Bruce Lee to set me on a path that would eventually lead to Christ Jesus. Bruce Lee taught me to question systems, to seek truth beyond tradition, and to pursue what is real rather than what is merely inherited.

But only Jesus Christ could save me.

Only Jesus could break the chains of deception.

Only Jesus could reveal Himself through Scripture.

Only Jesus could lead me — and later my wife — out of false religion and into the truth of the Gospel.

Every step — from the boxing gym to the seminary — was part of God’s design to lead me from imitation to transformation.

My journey began with Bruce Lee and the martial arts.

It ended — and truly began — with Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”  — John 14:6 (ESV)