No credentials, no institution, no agenda. Just someone reporting what he’s seen in Scripture — and an invitation to look for yourself.
I’m Lance Knoechel. I live in the Talladega National Forest in Alabama with my wife Mary. What follows is how I got here.
How I Got Here
I was raised Seventh Day Adventist, which gave me an early exposure to the seventh-day sabbath and to prophecy as meaningful. It also gave me an early skepticism toward unsubstantiated dogma — a skepticism the institution didn’t particularly welcome.
In my teens I walked away from all of it and made a thorough mess of things. Eventually the mess brought me back to looking seriously at Scripture — not as a churchThe English word "church" does not translate the Greek ekklesia — it derives from kyriakos, a pagan term for a building belonging to a lord. The Greek ekklesia — the called-out ones — was used by NT writers to describe both the NT body and Israel in the wilderness (Acts 7:38), connecting directly to the Hebrew qahal, the assembled congregation, which the Septuagint most commonly renders as ekklesia. A spiritual organism, not a building or institution. Synonyms: ekklesia, ecclesia, called-out ones, assembly, congregation, kyriakos, qahal, edah. See The Called-Out Ones More member but as someone with real questions and nowhere comfortable to take them.
Around 1984 I came across the Worldwide Church of God. What caught my attention was their understanding of the feasts and holy days of Leviticus 23 — not as obsolete ceremonies but as a framework revealing the master design, structure, and sequence of God’s plan. I found that genuinely fascinating and still do. WCG also emphasized proving everything from the Bible, which suited me.
What WCG couldn’t sustain was the tension between “prove everything” and “trust the authority of the church.” The organization resolved that tension by abandoning the first. I couldn’t follow it there.
I joined the United Church of God when it formed in 1995. Better in some ways, stuck in the same place in others. The questions I brought to WCG I was still carrying when I left UCG — unanswered, and increasingly unwelcome.
What I Was Seeing
For years I would raise certain questions with people in the church and get a glazed look in return. I assumed we were all seeing the same thing. It took a long time to realize we weren’t.
What I was seeing — and couldn’t yet articulate — was that Scripture has a coherent symbol-system running beneath the surface text. The feasts of Leviticus 23 are its densest concentration — the place where physical symbols converge in a structured pattern that points, in advance, toward Christ. Not as a theological claim to be argued but as something visible in the text once you know where to look.
The two lenses — Leviticus 23 and Christ — are not applied sequentially. They inform each other. Looking at the feasts through the lens of Christ, and at Christ through the lens of the feasts, produces a depth of perception that neither lens achieves alone. It is a genuinely spatial process — three-dimensional rather than flat. The symbol-system is what makes it navigable.
This is what MCYA exists to point at. Not to argue for, not to sell, not to build a following around. To point at clearly enough that the reader can look for themselves.
What This Site Is
Make Christ Your Aim is a body of writing built around that symbol-system and what it reveals. The feasts are the scaffolding. Christ is the subject. The writing is my attempt to point at what I’ve seen — as someone who has looked, not as someone who has mastered.
The intended reader is patient and willing to look. There are no quick conclusions here, no urgency, no pressure. If something resonates, look closer. If it doesn’t, no harm done.
Mary tells me I open up Scripture like she hasn’t seen anywhere else. I don’t say that to claim authority. I say it because it’s the closest external confirmation I have that what I’m trying to show is actually visible to someone else. That matters to a witness.