I wonder, have you ever had a "knocked on your butt" religious experience?

You know, like when Jesus came back, knocked Saul on his butt, then changed his life forever. So much so, he also changed his name to Paul. The man who wrote 2/3's of the New Testament.

Well, I doubt any of us have had that kind of experience, yet some can point back to that moment God stopped them in the middle of the Broadway they were blindly traveling, knocked them on their butt and shoved them onto the narrow path. Like a certain seventeen-year-old boy, who in 1975, got knocked on his butt.

Attention The rest of this account is mixed with speculation, and my eye witnessing the events that led to this missive.

On November 1, 1975, there was a simultaneous event, Dr. Scott was handed the keys to the first, and then nearly defunct Christian broadcasting station called Faith Broadcasting Center, AND the entire church board immediately resigned. That was a condition Doc demanded before he accepted the position.

People forget, there were employees and an established congregation that came with the package. There was a young teenage boy named Joseph Cortes among them, who quickly found himself on the ground looking up.

On November 1, 1975, Joe Cortes found himself a survivor of Dr. Scott's first day, it wouldn't be long before he became Doc's first intern. I don't know much about the goings on regarding Joe in those first few years, as I didn't start watching Dr. Scott until 1978. It took me a few years before I started attending church services, and it wasn't until 1984 I became an intern myself. The only real accounting I have for those early years are from Joe's rare on-air musings about them.

It was during one such musing, many years ago now, I learned from Joe he was living a second life alongside the one I was witnessing several rings away from Joe's orbit around Dr. Scott's world. But I can unequivocally state, it was obvious to me very quickly Joe had been tapped as the prince.

I'm guessing you want to know what Joe's second life was all about.
Well, I'm guessing what Doc would have done (AT LEAST 3 TIMES!) right here in the story.

Now then where was I? Oh yeah, Joe's second life.

I don't think Joe considered it a second life; I think he considered it his "Private life". Something the interns had very little of in those days as we were expected to keep up with Doc. Considering the man only slept about 4 hours a night, keeping up with Doc meant praying your last detail of the day wasn't anywhere he was, because you weren't going to bed before he did.

Joe's private life had him carving out every opportunity to study his own developing interests in God's word. Joe stated he often took his lunch breaks to study in the cool crypts of the famous Forest Lawn cemetery just across the street from the Glendale church and office where Joe primarily worked from.

It's important to keep in mind the access he had to the finest study materials in the world. Not only to Doc's private stash (no telling what was in there), but just up the street from both Pasadena Doc properties was the campus of the Worldwide Church of God led by the late Herbert W. Armstrong. (now rebranded as The Restored Church of God), to which Doc had unprecedented access to its historical Library for many years before it closed.

Joe was Doc's "librarian" there. Few knew Joe was the person that did the footwork for acquiring the materials and books Dr. Scott was interested in studying. And I doubt anybody knew (including Joe), how God was piquing his interests to also find the materials he would decades later be teaching about.

Over the years Joe began to discover he had different takes on some of the things Doc taught on. To his great credit, Joe bodes his time as a loyal and faithful intern, ultimately, the only intern to remain with Doc from the day he arrived in 1975, to the day he Died in 2005.

I'd bet, not a single person alive EVER knew Dr. Scott better than Joseph A. Cortes.

Now, I don't know for sure, but I think it's not a coincidence Joe started his ministry on November 1, 2005.

 Exactly 30 years to the day he got knocked on his butt.