12. How a Bible in a Rucksack was so Empowering.

My Late Father's Hopelessness in Family Holidays.

Before I was born in 1952, my future mother had left her Italian hometown of Turin and found accommodation in London. Not that there was any dispute with her parents or siblings. During this post-War period, all agreed that she might find better opportunities here in the UK. As such, there were rivers of tears when she boarded the Paris-bound train at the city's Porta Nuova Station.

It was here that she met her future husband at an Italian community in the Barbican area of London. I was born a year after their wedding in 1951. However, throughout my childhood years, and including the birth of my brother six years later, Mum always kept close to her parents in Italy. At first, she corresponded solely by letter-writing. It was several years later that international phone calls became available. These were made via an operator, and the lines were connected after a delay, perhaps up to an hour. Hence, these international calls were a special occasion, despite Dad's anxiety about paying the phone bills.

By the 1960s, Dad had passed his driving test and had bought his first second-hand car, a Ford Popular. After using it locally and taking day trips to the seaside, which was at Brighton, the nearest Channel resort to London, Mum's longing for her reunion with her parents was strong. Hence, during my boyhood, Dad drove us all the way to Italy twice during the sixties, with the final third trip made in 1971, when I was 18, and dating my first girlfriend, Sandra.

The only exciting moment of these holidays was the Channel crossings. It took three days to cover the 770-mile distance, with two nights spent sleeping in the car. We had to face the truth. Dad was hopeless with hotel bookings, and as for "off the street" walk-ins, it wasn't that he lacked confidence. Rather, these holidays were governed by a tight budget. Sleeping in a parked car was his solution to a holiday abroad that my parents couldn't really afford.

My maternal grandparents (Italian: Nonni) lived on the top floor of an apartment block, the standard of Italian housing. Every apartment had two balconies, and the upper floor offered interesting views, especially from the rear balcony, which overlooked a children's swing park. Thank goodness for the swing park!

If it wasn't for the swing park, I would have gone mad with sheer boredom! My grandparents couldn't speak English; in turn, I couldn't understand Italian. Therefore, at age 13, I was locked out of all conversations. My apparent apathy towards the extended family earned a hard smack across the cheek from Dad, and a loud telling off from my grandfather, whose endless torrent of unintelligible words landed on deaf ears. Turin is an inland city, no seaside, no amusements, no stroll in any beautiful environment. An industrial town with its urbanisation, and with little historic significance, to my mind.

1966, aged 13. Dad drove us to Italy to see Nonni.

However, it was during the 1971 trip to Italy that I enjoyed some independence, although still staying at our maternal grandparents'. Avoiding their unintelligible chatter, I, alone, took the tram to the city centre, and I discovered that Turin did have something to offer the tourist, although there were no Roman archaeological sites. The River Po passes through the east of the city, and with the hills in the background, making a pleasing environment.

Dad's first car was a second-hand Ford Popular.

Independent Travel? It's in my Genes.

The Costa Brava on the Mediterranean coast of Spain, just south of the Pyrenees, was my first holiday abroad with a college friend and without my parents. It was 1972, and I was approaching the end of my teenage years. However, I still wasn't a Christian believer, and by natural instincts, this was a time for unrestricted hedonism, to "let it all out" after my boyhood constraints at my grandparents' apartment. This led to alcohol intoxication during the night, even spent the small hours of one night sleeping in the hotel bathtub amidst vomit.

Spain 1972 was a package holiday with the travel firm Cosmos. A package is a trip for which both the airline flight and hotel accommodation were made under a single booking. The hotel also serves as a base for excursions, a day spent on an escorted tour. In this one, we boarded a coach for a day trip to Barcelona, taking a boat cruise around the harbour, followed by an afternoon spent watching a traditional Spanish bullfight.

I became a Christian believer in December 1972. This conversion had changed my mode of travel entirely. A change from family get-togethers and then package hedonism to solo backpacking. And this was to be my mode of travel until our honeymoon in 1999, where we had a package to the Greek island of Rhodes.

27 years of solo backpacking. On two different occasions, I was referred to as brave. It was a lovely compliment. Yet, I was surprised. I never equated backpacking with fighting in a war, or rescuing someone from a housefire, or a drowning person from deep water. However, from a Christian point of view, I was rather unique. Why was this? 

My experience with church people of my age bracket seldom ventured abroad on their own. They had their own travel firm, Oak Hall, a company specialising in Christian packages. There was even a posh version, Intersun, now Richmond Travel, for Christians who wish to holiday with the elite. But solo backpacking? Within the 27 years of independent travel, I have never encountered another backpacker of the faith. Indeed, I knew of one believer who flew across the Atlantic Ocean to attend a conference in Washington DC. Another flew out to attend a church revival in Florida. But backpacking - to travel from one destination to another, each with its own accommodation- I'm still waiting for someone to testify.

But believing that God will care for me at all times has encouraged me to venture out. One example of this was Israel in 1976. This was after three years of Bible study. Since almost the entire Bible is centred on Jerusalem, and the city of the Crucifixion, Burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, God incarnate, this was one place I wanted to visit for myself. So, with a Bible packed in my luggage, I set off alone, unlike any other Christian I knew, and having arrived, I walked into a hotel to ask if there was a room available. That is independent travel.

The 1977 and 1978 trips to Canada and the USA followed the same pattern. With a Bible in my luggage, I travelled from town to town, from one tourist venue to another, always walking into a hotel or hostel from the street, and being offered a room or a dormitory bed. 

Long-haul travel ceased temporarily after the 1978 trip to the States. This was due to a change of occupation, from a machinist at the British Aircraft Corporation, to a year of unemployment, to becoming self-employed in 1980.

As mentioned last week, it was October 1992 when I received something like a vision while I was up on a ladder and cleaning a bedroom window. The vision was about my second trip to the Holy Land, specifically to pray for Jerusalem. The fulfilment of the vision took place ten months later in 1993, thus proving its genuine authenticity.  This was to open a new era of long-haul travel as an independent backpacker. This time, I carried a rucksack on my shoulders, freeing my arms, making me a "proper" backpacker. Before then, I hauled a suitcase. This second era of backpacking lasted eight years between 1993 and 2000 inclusive, the year we went for our final visit to the Holy Land before the birth of our first daughter. Except for our honeymoon in 1999, which was a package, in 2000, we walked into two different hostels, and we were offered a room in each. The independent way.

Although I boast about my mode of travel over the years, I fully realise that all of it was linked to my faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Guide. Take-off was, as I remember, preceded by prayer and entrusting myself to God's care. By recognising the need for his Guidance, I ventured out without fear or trepidation. Travel experience peaked in 1997. After hiking the Grand Canyon in 1995, the climax was backpacking in Australia. In 1997, I was able to gaze at the Southern Cross constellation in the night sky, streaked with the Milky Way, and look through goggles at the corals making up the Great Barrier Reef while snorkelling.

Cream of backpacking: hiking the Grand Canyon, 1995.

Cream of backpacking: the Great Barrier Reef, 1997.

On this Blogger page, I have written a detailed Biography of my travels. This was the result of the wishes of my readers, who also suggested writing a book. Feeling shy of approaching publishers, I have posted it here. It's quite long, all 129 weeks. Therefore, I have created an Index to the Biography, splitting it into sections. To access the section that interests you, first, click here for the Index. Then click the appropriate section you are interested in. Many sections have several blogs. After finishing the first, click "Newer Blog" which is found at the foot of the page.

Also proved to be even more popular are the travel photos. These consist of 58 weeks. However, there is no separate index for the photo section. To reach it, again, click on the Index, and click on "Newer Post". This brings you to the start of the photo album.

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Next Week, one man stood up. The theatre audience fell into a panic. And how that affected me.

11. Did I have a Vision on the Ladder?

 Sitting Still and all Alone during a Hysterical Moment.

It was a normal Sunday evening in the 1980s. Bracknell Baptist Church was meeting at what should have been an average service at the assembly hall of Garth Hill School. By then, the congregation had grown too large in numbers to fit in our own 70s-style church building. Therefore, we moved into temporary accommodation at the school until the construction of our much larger new building, to be called the Kerith Centre, was completed.

During the latter half of the service, two women, Tina and Judy, were invited to testify on the front stage. They shared their experience from their visit to the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship, one of John Wimber's Vineyard group of charismatic churches. With its senior Pentecostal pastor, Randy Clark, leading the congregation, an already familiar hysteria fell on the whole Canadian church. The Toronto Blessing. Here, people were shaking, laughing, crying, screaming, falling on their backs, growling, and even experiencing paralysis, and displayed hysteria. For anyone completely unchurched, walking in and witnessing such phenomena would have fled terrified, and associated it with demonic influence and power. Instead, the whole phenomenon was labelled as Slain by the Spirit. That is, the Holy Spirit.

When the two married women had finished their testimony, all of a sudden, the whole congregation here at Garth Hill School went into very similar hysterics. Like across the Atlantic Ocean, everyone displayed very similar characteristics to those in Toronto. 

Except me, who sat still and quiet amidst the commotion. Why wasn't I "slain by the Holy Spirit"? Here, in that large room, middle-class businessmen who were dressed in a suit and tie during the week in the office, and renowned for their British emotional restraint, fell into a state of supreme ecstasy. And there was I, sitting as still and quiet as a statue, observing everything around me without partaking. At the time, I really believed that the Holy Spirit had overlooked me.

Fortunately, this occurred en masse only once in the life of our Bracknell church, but while I was visiting a friend, I showed him my photo album of the Grand Canyon, which I visited in 1995. One photo featured a panel fixed to a wall. On it, a quote from Psalm 104:24, which reads:

O LORD, how manifold are your works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

I took this at the Grand Canyon Village, 1995.

This graduate friend was married and a father of two healthy, growing children. Yet, when he saw the photo, he jumped up, yelped, and shook for a moment, startling me, who sat opposite. Later, this same person came to visit me at my apartment. On the bookshelf, the spine of one of the books read, The Cup of Trembling. He went straight for it, and after pulling it out and reading the subtitle, Jerusalem and Bible Prophecy, he immediately placed it back on the shelf. For that brief moment, he thought I was reading about the Toronto Blessing. Instead, the book was about the Middle East and its Islamic influence. There were other cases of adult men trembling while in a prayer meeting or simply leaving after the end of the meeting.

Healed. Really?

Staying within this spirit charisma, in 1989, I left Bracknell Baptist Church, and for several months, I was without a church to go to, until I was introduced by another friend to Ascot Baptist Church, in the next town from Bracknell. At that time, Barry Buckingham was the pastor. However, in 1996, he was asked to stand down over a serious misdemeanour, and for a year, we were without a pastor, with the church led by the Baptist Union branch office in Windsor. Then, in 1997, shortly before I took off for Singapore, a new pastor, the late Phil Rogers, arrived, along with his family of three teenage sons.

It was during his ministry that one of our members, Barry Kill, developed cancer. When our elders learned about the Yoido Full Gospel Church in the far east, Phil took Barry and his wife, Sian, to South Korea to pray for Barry's healing from the disease. The Assemblies of God church, with up to 830,000 members in 2007, was the world's largest megachurch, which was led by David Yonggi Cho. It boasted a "prayer mountain" where many would ascend each day to pray specifically for healing. Reports were that many were healed of their illnesses and infirmities. These reports encouraged Phil, his wife, Sandy, and Barry, along with his wife, Sian, to fly out with the intention of returning with Barry healed of his cancer.

There seemed to be a strong similarity between the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, and the more famous Our Lady of Lourdes in Southern France. The latter is famed for the number of supernatural healings taking place there. Yet, never once had I heard the NHS recommend a visit either to Lourdes or Yoido. It is also interesting, to my mind at least, that all three churches that boasted divine intervention, including the Toronto Airport Fellowship, didn't believe in the Eternal Security of the Believer, or Once Saved Always Saved. Rather, each takes the Arminian worldview that one's eternal life must be maintained by lifelong faithfulness, or risk losing one's salvation altogether while still alive. With the doctrine of free grace compromised, the door remains open for other false teachings or manifestations to creep in.

Our four Ascot members returned from South Korea. Barry was still unwell, and a mere week later, he died while he was still in his prime, to be with the Lord.

And so the beat goes on. Reports of divine healing, but throughout my half-century as a Christian believer, I have never witnessed any supernatural healing, especially of the instantaneous kind.

Indeed, about two or three years ago, Paul, our church treasurer, went down with paralysis of his lower body, from his waist down, and he had to spend a year in hospital as an inpatient, followed by a spell in a rehabilitation home. Each day, prayers went up for him to recover. Much to the amazement of the doctors, he gradually regained his mobility. We all praised God and thanked him for his recovery.

Considering my own wife's illness. Suffering from Functional Neurological Disorder, which makes her wheelchair-bound when outdoors, prayers were offered on her behalf, but after 13 years, she shows little recovery. Rather, to this day, she still experiences waves of pain, and she's in and out of the hospital. Therefore, I ask, did God show favouritism when he healed Paul after just a year, but not Alex over 13 years?

Paul spent a year cared for by the NHS, with doctors and well-trained nurses meeting all his needs. This was quite a contrast to two specific healings, both recorded in the Bible. In the New Testament, Acts, chapter 3, records a beggar, crippled from birth. When Peter and John approached him, they gained his attention. The beggar was expecting a donation, but Peter said,

Silver and gold, I have none, but what I have, I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!

And immediately, the beggar rose to his feet for the first time in his life. He danced with joy over the miracle. No prayers. No hospitals. No doctors. No nurses or care homes. Instead, a straightforward healing.

Paul and Barnabas in Lystra had a similar experience. While Paul was preaching about the resurrection of Christ in the marketplace, he saw a man who was also crippled from birth. When he saw that the beggar had faith, and without any prayers, Paul commanded him to rise up and walk. He did. When the crowds saw the miracle, they all attributed Paul and Barnabas as their gods Hermes and Jupiter, appearing in the likeness of men (Acts 16).

These were true divine miracles. And their main purpose? To convince the crowds that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Messiah, who died for their sins, was buried, and on the third day, rose from the dead, and gives eternal life to all who believe and trust in him. A far cry from spending a year as an inpatient at a hospital! It's by careful Bible study, especially in the Book of Acts, that the working of miracles was restricted to the apostles only. There seems to be no record of any other disciple or believer other than the thirteen (the 12 disciples of Christ and Paul the apostle) working miracles, especially of instant healing and even raising the dead.

Considering all that I have experienced here, and never witnessed a proper divine healing, I can't help but feel very sceptical when I hear about modern healing. For a start, those I have seen prayed for were already Christian believers. Neither of the two beggars was a believer until their miraculous healing, which also converted them to Christ.

I was (and still am) holding this worldview that one October morning in 1992, I set off to do a day's window cleaning. On my way to the street, I called at a friend's home not only for a coffee and chat, but to clean his windows. It was a regular call I have been making for some time. However, a disagreement arose between us, and he dismissed me from cleaning his windows. Feeling very downcast and mourning over the loss of a friend, I made my way to the street for the rest of the day.

I was up on the ladder cleaning one of the upper-floor bedroom windows when a sudden thought, almost a vision, entered my head. It was quite sudden and intense. I saw myself standing on the summit of the Mount of Olives, praying over Jerusalem, its panorama making a spectacular view from the summit.

What went through my mind, October 1992.

I gasped. Somehow, I knew that this was a divine intervention. But this needed proving. The test lay in funding for the trip. Up to that point, I made enough to live on adequately without getting into debt. But from that week onwards, I found that I had £20 to put away into the savings each week. There was no interruption. Week after week, I saved up until the start of August 1993. After 15 years since 1978, of staying firmly on the ground, once again, I took to the air from London to Israel, Tel Aviv.

As I sat in the well-used Monarch Airlines, little did I know that the "vision" I had while I was feeling low and worthless would open up not just this 1993 trip to Israel, but the next seven years of my life, which I believe had some divine inspiration.

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Footnote:

This morning, after our church service was over, I had a friendly chat with Sandy, the widowed wife of Phil Rogers. When I wrote this blog yesterday, I said that it was Mark Froud who flew to South Korea with Phil. I was mistaken. The text is now corrected. The patient who flew out was Barry Kill, after reading a book about Yonggi Cho's megachurch. Hopes were high for returning home healed. However, all who were involved have testified that they felt a strong presence of God while they were on the prayer mountain.

I apologise for any confusion caused.

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Next Week, with a rucksack on my back, I was alone - but not really alone.

10. A Rise to Peak Fitness.

Why I had to Switch Churches in 1990.

Between 1975 and 1989, I spent nearly 15 years attending Bracknell Baptist Church. As I said last week, I never sat well with its practical sermons that leaned more on capitalism than on Jesus Christ, even though our senior pastor, Ben Davies, taught salvation by faith in Christ only and the truthfulness of the believer's eternal security.

As more and more graduates filed in during the late eighties, our church building couldn't accommodate the growing congregation. Each Sunday, it spilt into the adjoining meeting room. That means there was a large number of people who partook in the service without facing the front platform. Eventually, we moved to the assembly hall of Garth Hill School. This hall had a larger capacity than the original church building, and we met there for several years while funds were raised to buy the adjoining land next to the church and to build a new meeting venue with a vision of 1,000 seats.

Hence, Sunday by Sunday, sermons were more about money than about Jesus Christ. The verses of Scripture used were mainly from Malachi 3:8-12. Here, if a person or family does not tithe, then they are under a curse for robbing God. And here was the only Scripture where testing God was permitted. Tithe, and God will bless us financially. It was hardly short of the Prosperity Gospel, a heresy often pushed by American televangelists such as Kenneth Copeland and Oral Roberts.

The necessity to tithe, although still voluntary rather than compulsive, made me feel placed under the Law rather than acting under grace. Little wonder, as Malachi 1:1 specifically stated that this Old Testament book was addressed to Israel only, and not to the Church, nor to any of the Gentiles. Hence, over time, I began to feel spiritually hungry, even to the point of practising something akin to the occult. No, not the Ouiga board, but by making a paper pyramid on the exact scale of the Great Pyramid of Egypt, and testing whether it has power to sharpen a razor blade when placed inside, or to turn milk into edible cheese. Oh, if only I knew how to rightly divide the Word of Truth! I wouldn't have gotten myself into this mess.

Before the end of 1989, I decided to leave Bracknell Baptist Church with its obsession with unbridled capitalism. Several months elapsed without any church attendance. Then, in the summer of 1990, one of my friends, Tim Kingcott, invited me to Ascot Baptist Church. I attended an evening service, and I liked it straight away. Its pastor, Barry Buckingham, was enthusiastic about Jesus Christ, his death, burial and resurrection, and that was the tonic I so desperately needed. Immediately, my dabbling with pyramid power ceased.

Hospital Radio Presenter (see below).

The Change of Churches in relation to Work.

Having lost my job at the British Aircraft Corporation, renamed British Aerospace, in 1979, I was unemployed for over a year. In those days, I attended Bracknell Baptist Church. I spent much of that time visiting our local Jobcentre, and indeed, I have found one or two dead-end jobs where I certainly wouldn't want to spend the rest of my life. One of those jobs was at Nurdin & Peacock's, a wholesale warehouse on the edge of Reading. I was there for two months in early 1980.

However, in those days, I was driven by envy of the graduates who attended our church, and with secure, high-tech jobs and a stable income, they were okay with tithing. One graduate, married and with a high income, even judged me for making a stand against tithing. At Nurdin & Peacock's, I was very unhappy. Little wonder that a furious row with the foreman led to my dismissal. Perhaps this graduate was right after all. My inability to hold down a job might be part of the curse of Malachi.

However, during my time at Nurdin & Peacock's, a middle-aged female was passing through, possibly one of their customers. A complete stranger whom I had never spoken to before, turned to me and asked, You're a Christian, aren't you? Despite how I was feeling, I confirmed to her that I was. This was just the encouragement I needed. It's known as the word of knowledge, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

However, after my dismissal from the warehouse, my housegroup leader, frustrated at my failed work life as an employee, encouraged me to go self-employed. Immediately, I liked the idea. I already had some experience in painting and decorating, having painted interior walls with emulsion during the period of unemployment. However, the painting side of the business struggled through its first winter, that of 1981. This was due to a combination of a lack of customers, poor weather for exterior painting of door and window frames, slow work and a lack of proper income. I need to branch out to a far more stable source of income. Domestic window cleaning was the answer.

I went canvassing around the housing estates. I aimed for four streets, one for each week of the month. I managed to collect a small number of clients from all four streets. Thus, I combined domestic window cleaning and decorating, providing a more stable income.

Over the months covering the next two years, I picked up more and more clients in all four rounds. Gradually, each street per week became two, then three. There was no more room for painting and decorating. Instead, window cleaning became my full-time job, stabilising my income and covering the whole working week. I kept this job for the next 35 years, and retired in 2015, at age 63, mainly due to failing health.

Leisure Activities.

In 1981, Tim Kingcott was the crew leader at Radio Heatherwood, an in-hospital broadcasting station tucked away in a large closet under the maternity wards. Run by the League of Friends, each evening, a different crew runs the station. Ours was the Friday crew. 

I joined the Friday crew under Tim's invitation, and each of us went out to the wards to collect requests for each patient's favourite music to be played. Also, each of us had a turn to present. Although officially known as presenters, we called ourselves jocks, short for disc-jockeys.

I concentrated on the maternity wards, both pre- and postnatal. At first, I was assigned just thirty minutes at the console, later extended to a full hour. When Tim had to leave due to his full-time work as an accountant, I took on the mantle of team leadership and, with God's help, led the team to be one of the most popular among the inpatients.

I presented on the Friday crew for five years between 1981 and 1986. On one occasion, I even wore a tie, and this was captured on camera. However, during my time there, the League of Friends announced that there was a shortage of funds, and no one had in mind to close the station. As the 1986 Bracknell Half Marathon was approaching, I set off to persuade my customers to sponsor me to raise funds for the hospital station, as it was run entirely by charitable donations.

In April 1986, I completed the half-marathon, a distance of 13 miles (21 km) in less than two hours, rather slow for men's athletic standards, but successful. I raised enough funds from my sponsors to help sustain the radio station. The completion of half marathons, and I did several of them, led to the sport of triathlon, swim-cycle-run, three disciplines in one race. In the autumn of 1986, after finishing with Radio Heatherwood, I joined Thames Valley Triathletes, based in Reading, and trained to full peak fitness.

1986 Half Marathon.

I also competed in triathlons around Southern England. Venues such as Reading, Eastbourne, Winchester, Essex, Swanage, and other venues drew my competitive attention. Most of these venues involved train travel and overnight hotel stays.

It was while I was in my seven-year of TVT membership that I changed church. This included the period when I had no church to attend. When I eventually started attending Ascot Baptist Church, the set-up was quite different to what it is today. Barry Buckingham, along with his two deacons, Bill Hopkins and Les Draper, wore suits and ties, and each sat at either side of Barry as he stood at the bulky, wooden pulpit to preach. Furthermore, several men wore ties in the mixed congregation. Rather than graduates, Ascot attracted a group of undergrads from Holloway University, a few miles down the road, in the Egham area.

Today, Ascot Life Church has its Sunday morning service at the Paddock Restaurant at the Ascot Racecourse. We moved to this venue in 2013, when our own building, now called The Life Centre, became too small to accommodate the growth of the congregation. Although there is no senior pastor, the church is led by three elders. Two of them are young enough to be my grandsons, and the third is the son of Les Draper, and closer to my age.

Footnote: Last week, I asked whether I had a supernatural vision while I was at work. But I had so much to narrate about this week that I have deferred that to next week.

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Next Week: With faith in God, a life of cleaning windows was much more than mere ladders, a bucket, and a chamois.

9. A Lifelong Effect in Misinterpreting Scripture.

It wasn't all my fault.

After my father ripped his own KJV Bible into shreds and binned it, I bought two new versions: a new KJV and a Revised Standard Version  (RSV). Reading the Bible was frequent, and my knowledge of its contents gradually grew. However, a failure to rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV) led to a life without real peace and assurance of salvation. This was not so much my fault in its entirety, but the failure of the church pastor, elders, or fellow brethren to show me the right way. After all, the Ethiopian eunuch needed the tutelage of the apostle Philip to help him understand the writings of the prophet Isaiah. Such tutelage led to the eunuch's conversion to Christ (Acts 8:26-40).

I have already explained what it meant to "divide the Word of Truth" in my previous blogs in this testimony. Using a cake illustration, it needs to be "cut straight" into slices before consumption. That is exactly what the word "divide" here means. To cut straight into sections.

Thus, in the spring of 1975, I began to attend Bracknell Baptist Church. The pastor, a strong-minded Welsh extrovert named Ben Davies, used the Gospel of Matthew as his favourite text for preaching. His sermons were practical rather than theocratic and were delivered in an authoritative tone. That is, "You heard my message, now apply it." This was also known as mechanical preaching.

Hence, between the years 1975 and 1989, although I attended both the morning and evening Sunday services, along with the Wednesday evening prayer meeting, I never quite sat comfortably at Bracknell as I did in St Jude's. Neither had I experienced lasting peace in my soul with definite assurance of salvation.

This was because Matthew's Gospel (along with Mark and Luke's Gospels) contained the Sermon on the Mount, and an in-depth exposition of the Law of Moses. For example, just being angry with someone without a valid reason is murder, and simply calling someone a fool is in danger of hellfire. And looking lustfully at a woman is committing adultery in the heart. Furthermore, it is more difficult for a rich man to enter Heaven, and one must sell all his possessions, take up his own cross, and follow Jesus for eternal life. Also included is the need to tithe, and fasting is added to prayer. Furthermore, one must forgive the wrongdoer to be forgiven by God, and one must endure to the end to be saved.

All these make up the Gospel of the Kingdom, an earthly kingdom promised to Israel. The nation of Israel is the future Bride of Christ; they are the people of God. This is where dividing, or cutting straight, the Word of Truth, comes in. This may surprise you, as it did with me when I first found out. We are not the Bride of Christ. Israel is the Bride of Christ. We are closer, more intimate. We are the Body of Christ, with Christ himself as the head. From his brain, his spiritual nerve system conveys signals of love directly to each believer. And from his heart, his lifeblood flows directly into each one of us. This Free Grace slice of the cake is set apart from the Kingdom Gospel slice, even though both are God-inspired Scriptures of the one Bible.

Here is a good comparison. I remember our wedding day. It was a moment of both nervousness and joy. She stood by me, I made my vows, she made hers, and we joined as one in holy matrimony. But in life, we are still two separate people. But at my birth, I was born with both my arms and legs. I didn't ask any of my body parts to marry me! As the Body of Christ, we believe in the Gospel of Free Grace. I'm aware that I have already said this, but I love repeating it. In this Gospel, advocated by the apostle Paul, one has to accept as true the death of Jesus Christ on the cross to pay for all our sins, and his burial to prove that he truly died, and on the third day, he rose from the dead, and can save everyone who believes. Once saved, he could never be lost again, as Christ paid for all his sins, past, present and future. He is sealed with the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption, a guarantee of eternal life.

Indeed, Once Saved Always Saved (OSAS) was advocated by Ben Davies and his deacons; in reality, by mixing the Kingdom Gospel with free grace, I didn't benefit from this sweet truth, despite convincing myself of its truthfulness as well as standing up to anyone who denied OSAS in favour of the idea that salvation is forfeitable. To sum up, I didn't sit that well at Bracknell Baptist Church.  In addition to this, with the arrival of graduates taking up high-tech employment, the church's appearance began to fit the description: The Tory Party on its knees.

During my latter years at Bracknell, a building project was launched, as the number of people began to overspill the main sanctuary and into the adjoining meeting room. Thus, emphasis on tithing and double-tithing was delivered from the pulpit. I felt ill at ease. The main text of Scripture was Malachi 3:8-12, and according to Malachi 1:1, this book, like all the others in the Old Testament, was addressed to Israel, and not to the Church. I felt that the need to tithe placed me under the Law; thus, material and financial blessing from God was earned rather than from free grace already paid for by Christ, his death and resurrection. At the end, I had to leave Bracknell Baptist Church altogether, and I was without a church to go to throughout 1989, into 1990.

The new building, known as the Kerith Centre, is named after the brook Kerith flowing through the ravine in Israel, east of the Jordan River. It opened in 1989 to house the renamed Bracknell Community Church. It is a smaller version of the 7,200-seater Willow Creek Church in Chicago, whose senior pastor, Bill Hybels, knew Ben Davies personally. The Kerith Centre houses 1,000 people.

The old 70s-style Baptist Church co-existed with the Kerith Centre for a short while until funds were raised to demolish the old building. In its place, the K2 was built to house children's meetings during the Sunday services and for midweek meetings. The K2 was named after the world's second-highest mountain, located in the Himalayas, near Mt. Everest.

The Kerith Centre, Bracknell.

In 1990, I joined Ascot Baptist Church under the recommendation of Tim Kingcott, a close friend of mine. At the time, the pastor was Barry Buckingham, now deceased, and his two deacons, Bill Hopkins, who now lives in Florida, and the late Les Draper.

Work and Leisure.

As already mentioned in weeks past, my first job after leaving school in 1968 was an apprentice wood finisher, although the training fell short of a proper apprenticeship. For example, after five years, I still wasn't qualified to spray colour a cabinet. Skilled finishers such as Alf Earl never wanted to pass their skills to the next generation. In 1973, I took on the post of a pool attendant in Reading, where life-saving qualifications were required. After four months, I returned to factory life, but this was very different to the first. At Bardens, the precision engineering workshop specialising in ball-bearing races, I fitted in well as a machine setter/operator. It was here that my growing knowledge of the Bible inspired me to backpack the Holy Land in 1976, just weeks after flying the nest to set up my own home.

Then, just over a year later, in 1977, entrepreneurs such as Freddy Laker, along with his rival, Jetsave, opened the door for economy Transatlantic travel, and for the first time, fulfilled a dream of walking through an American street, swimming in the Great Salt Lake, and standing by the thundering Niagara Falls.

I was settling at Bracknell Baptist Church when, in 1977, not long after returning from America, Barden decided to close its Bracknell branch and move to Plympton, just east of Plymouth in Devon. I, along with most of the other workers, was made redundant.

Soon after, I settled at the British Aircraft Corporation in Weybridge, Surrey. It was the largest company I had ever worked for, with all of its buildings on the site of the disused Brooklands motor racing circuit. While I was there, parts of the original racetrack could still be seen. The job I had was very similar to Bardens', but more challenging, as I learned to machine-shape parts of the aeroplane, including the front wheel axle, with precision. I worked there for nearly two years, between 1977 and 1979. While I was an employee at the Corporation, in 1978, I flew across the Atlantic Ocean for the second time, with the intent of visiting the Grand Canyon. I ended up on an unscheduled hike to the Colorado River and back over two days.

British Aircraft Corporation, Weybridge.

Like at Clarke's, the public swimming pool, and Bardens, at the British Aircraft Corporation, I didn't hide my Christian faith there either.  But still not properly dividing the Word of Truth, the lack of assurance of my salvation began to suppress my keenness to share the Gospel, as I did with greater enthusiasm before. Furthermore, there were young men, fellow employees, who out-argued me to the point that I couldn't give an adequate answer.

Then, in June 1979, I lost my job at the Corporation (which by then was renamed British Aerospace) due to a serious machine error which probably cost the business thousands. The next 14 months, I lived on Unemployment Allowance as I tried to look for work and, at the same time, sustain myself. I was against any idea of the Bank of Mum & Dad, and to be fair, Dad in particular was also against that idea.

Spiritual testing came during this period of unemployment. The trip to Israel in 1976, along with the two trips to North America, rapidly receded into the past. The money dwindled, but the energy bills kept dropping through my door. One morning, the electricity bill dropped through. I wasn't able to pay it. So I laid it flat on the kitchen worktop, and I prayed over it. The next morning, an envelope dropped through. The sender was anonymous, but the contents of the envelope were a cash sum which matched the payment demanded by the bill.

And so, living was scarcely above the breadline during those fourteen months. However, our current church housegroup leader, who, in 1980, ran a high-tech job agency, helped me in setting up my own self-employment business. At first, it was painting and decorating people's homes. However, the business struggled through its first winter, and so, the birth of domestic window cleaning. The business was still ongoing by 2015, when I sold it to a fellow window cleaner and retired at 63, due to deteriorating health, after 35 years of self-employment.

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Next Week: Did this Window Cleaner receive a life-changing supernatural vision?

8. The Effects at Work and Leisure Activities.

 How a Victim of Intimidation Became a Source of Power.

The social structure of Britain in the 1960s was quite different to what it is at present. The class structure was more rigid, and corporal punishment existed in homes and schools. In turn, there was a respect for authority to the point that some school students were terrified of male teachers who wielded the cane. No pupil would dare answer back to a teacher. At home, it was Dad who gave me my share of whacks, mainly for answering back when rebuked. To him, this was not cruelty. It was part of growing up and learning respect for others.

However, at secondary school, I was wise enough to avoid physical chastisement, even if I received my share at the joint infants/junior school. During physical education classes at our secondary school, the boys were split from the girls and combined with boys from another class. From time to time, someone would forget what day of the week it was and leave their gym kit at home. Without an appropriate excuse, such as a doctor's note, the boy was subjected to several strokes, administered with full strength, with the sole of a plimsoll across his buttocks in front and in full view of us all. Each boy's reaction differed. I knew two who just screwed their faces and took the punishment without showing any emotion or tears. But one in particular burst into tears midway through, and pleaded loudly to stop. But the master didn't until the appropriate number was delivered. 

It was this type of scene that stuck with me for life, reminded me what day of the week it was, and made me remember my gym kit. Yet throughout secondary education, I just managed to avoid corporal punishment altogether.

With such an upbringing and what I had seen, I entered the world of work with very low self-esteem. Hence, pushing a broom across the floor each morning wasn't shocking or humiliating at all. Rather, this was something to be expected. In addition to that, I absorbed teasing and smut without any reaction. And the culture in that all-male environment revealed much. That is, with only around twenty employees in the entire furniture factory, many were suffering from low self-esteem, including post-War trauma. I became a pawn or a footstool on whom others used to lift their own egos. I was still working there when, as Christmas 1972 was approaching, I was converted to Christ through the meeting of the Children of God cult in London.

All the other employees were taken aback by my new faith, as I was open about it and never kept it hidden or a secret. With one employee, war veteran Alf Earl, my testimony brought out the worst in him, denying his existence because of a vulgar lack of physical evidence. Other employees showed respect, albeit grudgingly. I was no longer the helpless pawn. Rather, I seemed to have some power residing within me.

However, in 1968, a few months after leaving school and working at the furniture factory, I joined Bracknell Athletic Club and took part in track running in the summer, and cross-country foot races in the winter. However, this didn't erase any of the mockery I had to endure at work. Rather, participation in the sport only added to it. I remained a member of the club for two years, from 1968 to 1970. After 1970, I "returned to the world", as my coach, the late Mike Marlow, puts it.

At 16, (centre), I was a member of BAC in 1969.

However, in 1972, shortly after arriving home from Spain, my first holiday abroad without my parents, I became a member of the Reading Life-Saving Club, based at Arthur Hill Pool in Reading, a large town eleven miles from Bracknell. I attended until the spring of 1973. What we did was exactly what it said on the tin: rescuing a distressed person in deep water by various methods of towing, according to a given situation. This included the extended-arm tow for calm and cooperative victims, the cross-chess tow in rough water, and the chin tow for the violently panicking individual. We also learned the Silvester-Broch method of resuscitation, along with mouth-to-mouth (both of these are now obsolete). Alongside in-water rescue exercises and dry land resuscitation, we also learned A Level human anatomy, especially of the respiratory and circulatory systems.

During these Wednesday evening sessions in 1973, I never kept my faith in Jesus Christ a secret, but I was quite open about it. Through this, I discovered two or three other believing members who have linked their life-saving sessions with their faith. Here, the atmosphere was very different from the furniture factory I was working in. No teasing, no smut, I was treated equally to other members, and there was little or no low self-esteem that had a hold at the factory. By Christmas of 1992, the same time I met the COG movement, I took the Bronze Medallion qualifying award exam, consisting of all three: an in-water rescue demonstration, a demonstration in resuscitation, and my knowledge of human anatomy. I passed the threefold exam, and I was awarded a bronze medallion.

Possessing the medalion has opened the door to becoming a pool lifeguard anywhere in the UK. In May 1973, I left the furniture factory after I was offered a post at the Central Pool in Reading as one of the four patrolling lifeguards during the weekends, and with just one other person during the school term week. It was at the Central Pool that I had to go through in-water rescue exercises under a tall, muscular and bearded duty manager, Mr Birch, whose height dwarfed all of us. A few weeks later, I was transferred to Arthur Hill, where I first trained, and I was the sole attendant of the pool during the working week.

From the post of a lifeguard, by the Autumn of 1973, I switched jobs again. I accepted a job offer at Bardens, a precision engineering factory specialising in ball bearing races. These are the two rings where the solid steel balls roll. I was there from the Autumn of 1973 to the Autumn of 1977, four years in all. The workforce was of both men and women, and a very different atmosphere from that of A.G. Clarke's Furniture. There was no smut, no dirty language, and teasing was light and occasional. Also, a hot drinks vending machine was installed on the shop floor. Attached and facing the street, the management office housed male employees dressed in their business suits, a contrast to our white overalls and a visible manifestation of our class-divided society.

As I learned to use the micro-gauge, I quickly became known throughout the company for my Christian faith, as I insisted that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that salvation is found by believing in him. During lunch breaks, I made my way upstairs to the open-plan office and testified there, too.

It was while I was at Bardens that I first attended St Jude's in Brixton. Meanwhile, my knowledge of the Bible grew, both the Old and New Testaments. And one location of note was Jerusalem, a location with which Jesus was familiar. He credited the city as that of the Great King. He was crucified there, buried nearby, and on the third day, he was resurrected, proof that he was God, and that he paid for all our sins, opening Heaven to us. 

Having done some backpacking across Europe, especially Italy, I wanted to visit Jerusalem and see the city for myself. By then, I had moved from St Jude's to Bracknell Baptist Church in the late spring of 1975. This was the result of the 1974 Greenbelt Festival, where some friends in St Jude's met some from the Baptist Church, and even in my absence, I was the subject of their discussion.

Bracknell Baptist Church in the 1970s.

Returning to Bardens, by 1976, I was ready to take off to the Holy Land for a three-week holiday. However, the knowledge that I was travelling to the Middle East on my own has stirred astonishment throughout the workforce, both on the shop floor and in the offices. I became "the talk of the town".

However, a year earlier, in 1975, I had changed churches. Under the recommendation of my friends in St Jude's, I walked into this odd-looking building next door to the college in late spring of that year. At the time, the Reverend Ben Davies, a super extrovert, short in height, bearded, and slightly plump in his body build, was regarded as the senior pastor. Under him were four deacons: Dave Prior, Bob Wilson, Alan Lloyd, and Sidney Stevens. As I write this, all four have passed away, although Ben is still alive and has moved back to his homeland, Wales. For the first time, I noticed an adult baptistry built into the church, surrounded by columns which also held up the marquee-like roof. After watching several baptisms taking place there, I too asked to be baptised.

Before the ceremony, Ben wanted me to be approached by three of the four deacons. For the following month, I was to have lunch in the homes of Dave, Sidney, and Bob. This was for each to independently assess whether I was truly converted to Christ and qualified for baptism. All three separately gave their verdict. I was genuine.

That summer of 1975, I stood on the platform to give a brief testimony to the watching congregation. Then, fully clothed, I lowered myself, along with Ben, and he dunked me underwater. Splash! And the symbol of a new life begins.

A year later, in 1976, marked another major turning point. Since the end of 1972, my conversion to Christ has started a rift forming between my parents and me. It accumulated with my father tearing up his own KJV Bible into shreds and binning it in front of me. That Bible sat in his bookcase, untouched since around 1954 or 1955. When I took it out to study and became familiar with it, this nominal Catholic and agnostic was clearly annoyed. And also, I was an embarrassment to his mates, especially on the Creation/Evolution debate.

And so, the time arrived for me to fly the nest and set up home for myself. I was 23 at the time, and two years too young to rent a one-bedroom apartment in Bracknell. But I was just old enough to rent a bedsit at a newly built estate of Birch Hill. I accepted their offer after submitting my work reference. This bedsit was to be my residence for the next 26 years, the launching pad for self-employment, for world travel, our wedding, and also the birth of our first daughter.

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Next Week, Details of Christian growth at Worship, Work, and Leisure.

7. Knocker Men.

During the Months at St Jude's Anglican, Brixton.

I attended St Jude's Church in Dulwich Road, Brixton, mainly between late 1973 and 1975. This, as I emphasised, occurred due to coming across a magazine, Buzz, while searching for a Children of God colony that was recently set up, so I was directed to Railton Road in South London, where I came across, by chance, St Jude's Infant/Junior School.

At St Jude's, I allowed myself to be "deprogrammed" from the beliefs and teachings of the COG cult, and I felt loved and accepted at St Jude's. They described themselves as a "live" church, as opposed to a "dead" church, the latter of which stuck rigidly to its Anglican liturgy in its services, including praying for the Queen, offering virtually no fellowship, and having congregants return home soon after the service ended. I felt discouraged from attending such a church. Especially with the doctrines of David Brandt Berg, whose "Revolution for Jesus" is still fresh on my mind.

Although St Jude's (and most other churches) failed to "rightly divide the Word of Truth (2 Timothy 2:15), I could see their sincere love and belief in Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Dividing the Word means "cutting straight" like a knife through a cake, cleanly separating the whole into two or more parts. Hence, by failing to understand that the Bible has portions written for different people, at different times, and even at different places, meant that I found the "peace which passes all understanding" virtually impossible to attain. Instead, there were times when I had doubts about my salvation, I was prone to worry, and I suffered from an inferiority complex. Having lost my girlfriend in 1972, I wondered whether I would ever marry and raise a family.

So, what do I mean by "cutting straight"? Simply recognising that the Law of Moses, including the Ten Commandments, was given exclusively to Israel. Furthermore, the Decalogue was given to reveal the ten segments of the sinful nature that lies in every human heart, and the need for a Saviour. In the New Testament, the words spoken by both John the Baptist and Jesus himself are, Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. This Kingdom, addressed only to Israel, was meant to be an earthly Kingdom, with Jesus Christ reigning from the throne of his father David in Jerusalem, if Israel accepted him as their King. Instead, the nation rejected him and nailed him to a cross. 

The crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Christ from the dead ushered in what Paul called "the Mystery", which is the Gospel of free grace of eternal life. This is a free gift from God given to everyone who truly believes, and once received, the believer will never be lost again, for he is sealed with the Holy Spirit and kept by God until the day of redemption. This is the present Church Age, which is mostly for the Gentile world (non-Jews).

This wonderful knowledge was kept from me for many years, actually decades, and no doubt, there were always Christians who, over the centuries, lived and died without fully knowing this truth. But that doesn't mean that they were never saved. I, for one, was an example. I was saved in a pub in December 1972, but the knowledge of "cutting straight" didn't come until 2025. That is a wait of over half a century!

I attended St Jude's until 1975. But to show up at each service, I had to board a train at my hometown of Bracknell for London Waterloo, then travel by tube to Brixton. This became a burden, especially if there are many other churches in between. Those at St Jude's also realised this. 

Then, in 1974, some of those at St Jude's spent a week at the first Bible Week festival held in the Midlands, the Greenbelt Christian Festival. This was the forerunner of the Dales Bible Week, based in the Yorkshire Dales, and later, the Downs Bible Week, based in the South Downs in Sussex. The two I attended were Stoneleigh Bible Week near Coventry, and Spring Harvest, the latter a festival held at the Butlin's Holiday Camp, Minehead in Somerset. All the others required camping.

Greenbelt 1974 was the initial festival held near Ketley, Shropshire. Apparently, my friends at St Jude's camped near some young people from Bracknell Baptist Church, another "live" church, this one in my home town. Although I wasn't there myself, I became the key subject of the discussion that took place between the two groups.

Greenbelt Bible Festival, 1974.

However, despite the "nuisance" train journeys, St Jude's became my home church, and as I have already said, I was treated kindly. In addition to the Sunday services, I also attended Saturday Bible study and their fellowship meals. This was the advantage in those days of living with my parents. Each week, I paid Mum 50% of my wages for food and keep. The rest was mine for both saving up and pocket. Hence, these train trips were within affordability. In 1973, I saved up enough for a backpacking trip to Italy, where I stood on the rim of the crater of Mt Vesuvius and walked the streets of Pompeii.

I also bought myself a HI-FI unit with its two speakers. With it, I began to purchase Gospel music. In those days, they came either on vinyl or on cassette tape. Since I didn't have a record player in those days, I settled for the cassette tape. One cassette was the one I liked most of all. It was Come Together, by Jimmy & Carol Owens, and released in 1972. I also had other cassettes by the same singers, Tell the World, Show Me, and If My People. These recordings featured the singer Pat Boone. Another cassette I had was Scripture in Song, by David and Gale Garratt, and Praise the Name of Jesus, a music album also by David and Gale Garratt, with bird tweets in the background. These cassettes I still have to this day, but long in disuse.

The original album of Come Together.

Knocker Men.

One afternoon in 1974, I had just completed my morning shift, and I was at home with my father, who was already annoyed with my new faith. Himself a self-confessed agnostic, he still believed that the Roman Catholic church was the place to be for any religious veneration. His biggest headache I created for him was my abandonment of Darwinian Evolution and all the science and university graduations that went with it, to embrace Divine Creation with the worldview that the heavens and the earth, and all life on it, were created in just six literal days, as recent as 6,000 years ago. This alone has created a chasm between Dad and me. Especially with any hint that the Dinosaur and Mankind co-existed.

That afternoon, there was an unexpected knock on our front door, and when Dad answered it, he saw two young, smartly dressed men, of about my age, standing at the door. They identified themselves as Jehovah's Witnesses. For my father, this wasn't his first encounter with them. When I was little, Dad had a discussion with a couple of Witnesses while we lived in Pimlico. From them, he was given a King James Bible, complete with cross-references and even the date on which the events took place, dating back to 4,004 BC.

But Mum shouted angrily at him, If you have these two in again, I swear, I will divorce you! Mum was nominal rather than devoted; she still had an unwavering loyalty to her Catholic faith, a promise she made to her mother shortly before emigrating to England from Italy in 1950.

However, during our discussion, I became friendly with one of them, Paul. We were both of the same age, and we had much in common. We both wanted to get to know God better. And so, he invited me to his parents' home, less than a couple of hundred metres from our home. Here, Paul had his mate with him, and they led me to a Bible study.

The Watchtower Society of Jehovah's Witnesses is another cult, like the COG. However, their chief heresy was their denial of the Trinity, and Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and not God the Son. That is, Jesus was a created creature, inferior to the Father, who has begotten him without a mother, and was given the name Michael before his incarnation. Hence, their use of the term, the only begotten Son. If Jesus wasn't God incarnate, then his role of Saviour was reduced to the point that salvation is earned by hard work. That is, door-to-door evangelism, separating the "sheep" from the "goats". Also, once saved, always saved is denied, and one's endurance is required to be saved. With the deity of Christ denied and reduced to an archangel who was impaled on an upright pole, and not crucified, man is left to be his own saviour.

During the discussion, I instinctively stood up for the Trinity, and without any training or tutelage, I managed to defend the Trinity. Neither side was convinced, and the argument ended in a tie. They would not accept the truth of the Trinity, and I refused to accept Christ as a mere archangel. That is, until Paul's father arrived home. He didn't throw me out. Instead, he completely demolished me in his attempt to convince me of his denial of the Trinity, and our discussion ended.

But I took home a couple of Watchtower books. One of them was The Truth which Leads to Eternal Life. This was the book used in initial Bible studies for conversion. As I read it while alone in my bedroom, Dad came in with a strong rebuke, saying that in no time, I'll be converted to a Jehovah's Witness. With that in mind, he took the Bible I was reading, the very Bible given to him by a Jehovah's Witness when I was little, and in front of me, he tore it to shreds and binned it.

I was almost paralysed with shock! But I said nothing. Instead, I bought a new Bible for myself, a Revised Standard Version for easier reading and understanding. I also bought a beautiful black leather-bound King James Bible, and with this, I could compare text in different versions. The leather-bound Bible had a central cross-reference, an Index to the Bible at the back, along with a Concordance. Finally, a series of maps completed the book. To me, it was a treasure.

Another book I felt compelled to buy was Nestle's Interlinear Greek-English New Testament. The discussions I had with the JW included John 1:1, which in the KJV, reads, 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Watchtower Society had its own version of the Bible, The New World Translation. In it, John 1:1 reads, ...and the Word was a god.

Also, with their denial of the Holy Spirit as the third Person of the Trinity, and depersonalised as a mere active force, he was written without capitals in the NWT. Thus, I felt that the need for the Interlinear Greek-English New Testament was a necessity, and with it, I managed to learn how to read basic Greek.

The study made an impact on my life, and furthermore, on my colleagues at work. In the spring of 1973, I terminated my employment at A.G. Clarke's furniture factory to take on employment as a lifeguard at the Central Pool in Reading. However, by autumn, I switched to the Barden Corporation, a factory specialising in precision engineering. On the shop floor, I began to make an impact on my work colleagues, and the office staff did not escape, either.

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Next Week, how my testimony made an impact at work.

 

6. An Encounter During a Storm?

What was life like inside a cult? 

I couldn't say exactly when I found myself standing in front of St Jude's Primary School on Railton Road, Brixton. But I say a good several months, maybe even approaching a year, after my first encounter with COG at the Strand. Yet even as I sat in the primary school hall, with a magazine on my lap, I recall that rainy night I met these two young men who approached me to ask what I thought about Jesus Christ.

Most would have responded that this was none of their business, and quickened their footsteps to widen the distance between the enquirers and the enquired. But not me. Instead, feeling downhearted and wanting some attention, I responded positively, and I was converted to Christ in a pub.

As I sat on the chair and waited for the show to begin, I read the main article in the Buzz magazine, and I felt nostalgic for that fateful evening. However, I was curious to read the main article with a title that put in a clear rebuke to the statement: David "Moses" Berg was the "David" fulfilling the prophecy of Ezekiel 34:23-24, which reads:

And I will set up one shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he will be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David a prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken it.

The real David here could well be the resurrected king of Israel, the youngest son of Jesse, who reigned around 1,000 BC. But the writer of the article attributed him to Jesus Christ himself, after his second coming, to reign on his father David's throne in Jerusalem. But one thing is certain: this character was not David Brandt Berg!

As the number of his followers grew, David "Moses" Berg began to see himself as a kind of Messiah. He laid down strict rules for all his disciples. In my day, there were several sources of literature, all authored by Berg. One was titled Letters from a Shepherd, and on its cover was a shepherd's staff held in front of a distant range of high mountains. This presented a vastly different environment to the disused factory in Bromley, let alone the slums of London's East End! 

Then there were the Mo Letters, ot tracts handed to the public. On one of them was a line drawing of a young, naked female, apparently a seamstress, condemned in Hell, forever operating a sewing machine without producing anything. Her well-rounded breasts were specific in detail and beauty. Yet, I was convinced that this was created by a genuine man of God and must never be questioned.

A play with words was another feature in Berg's tracts. In one of them, he gave vivid details of the word "hole", from the recess in the Earth's crust filled with the ocean, to the female genitalia and its function. More emphasis was given to the latter than the former. He then transliterated "Hole" to "Holy", and then went on about the Holy Spirit. By believing that the author was close to God's heart (but not as a messiah), I absorbed everything he wrote as authentic and Biblical. Berg's use of the female genitalia to emphasise the Holy Spirit was pointed out in the Buzz article, and having possessed the original tract, slowly, a light began to shine within my soul, exposing the deception.

The above-mentioned literature was available to the public, but there was one that was kept strictly within the organisation. And that was The Revolutionary Manual. This was a booklet containing "classes", again authored by Berg. Studying this, one gets the impression of a radical form of orthodox, or mainstream Christianity. The first lesson was about salvation by free grace, and very unusual for a cult, Once Saved Always Saved was advocated. The second class was about being filled with the Holy Spirit. The third is about the Bible being the inspirational Word of God. Others followed, one about forsaking all to be Christ's disciple, another on street witnessing, another on daily tasks. Scripture references were sprinkled liberally within the text, and the new recruit was quickly brainwashed by the cult, believing that this organisation was setting out to achieve what the churches had failed in their mission over the centuries.

St Jude's Primary School, Railton Rd, Brixton.

The danger with this radicalisation was that there was no rightful dividing of the Word of Truth, as Paul instructed Timothy (2 Timothy 2:15). The mixing of Salvation by free grace through faith in Christ Crucified, and Discipleship, which was voluntary service to Christ's ministry. This led to a two-tier salvation. A believer who hasn't forsaken all, although he has eternal life, will still be shut out from the glorious New Jerusalem described in Revelation chapters 21 and 22. Instead, he will spend eternity free from Hell but still with regret. A "limited torment". Also, to note, there was no Communion, no Lord's Supper, nor any doctrine of the Trinity or other key Christian doctrines. As already mentioned last week, any contact with the home family was forbidden. Also, nobody claimed any property as their own. Instead, everything was equally shared by all in the colony.

Hence, in the decades that followed, I questioned my salvation and wondered whether I was really saved. Those were the years when I lacked the "peace that passes all understanding". Mixing free grace with the conditions of discipleship made evangelism very difficult, thus compounding the problem when I read about or hear sermons on the Great Commission.

How Buzz began the road to Delivery.

On that Saturday evening, whilst I was waiting for the show to begin, I was reading the main article featured in that particular edition of Buzz, a magazine published by the Church of England, and found by random on one of the unoccupied chairs in the school room. It just lay there and was ignored by others assembling in the room. It was as if whoever placed it there had the foreknowledge that I would turn up while trying to find a COG colony at Railton Road.

However, by reading and digesting the article, a ray of light shone within, indicating that David "Moses" Brandt Berg was not the supposed messiah he claimed to be. What if he wasn't after all? Would I accept the mainstream church as of God, after vigorously denouncing them over the past months?

This was difficult to accept. However, some lads of my age, including the Youth Leader, welcomed me with open arms. Each one spoke kindly, as if each had a genuine interest in me and my affairs. However, in response, I railed at them, accusing them of being "milk and water Christians" and having no idea about discipleship. Yet, even from Scripture, they showed me where I had gone wrong. Furthermore, I saw agape love in them, and, shown to me. I was taken aback. Then, one of them asked if I would like to go to his home nearby. When I said that I wasn't local, he offered a bed for the night. This kind of hospitality I was already used to, after sleepovers at Sandra's, the family home of my ex-girlfriend.

These people were of St Jude's Anglican Church at Dulwich Road, which was across a housing estate from Railton Road. Even from Railton Road, the steeple of the church could be seen. I recall my first visit to one of their evening services. As I sat through the liturgy, I, at first, felt embarrassed. I was taught by COG to despise such a place. And so I did throughout the months past. Yet, they accepted me for who I was, and for an Anglican Church, the minister, Dennis, believed in the Eternal Security of the Believer, as the COG members did. This alone helped me to settle in, and I made St Jude's my regular church, even if it meant a train from Bracknell to London Waterloo, then by tube to Brixton. Because of the travel, I could only attend the evening services.

St Jude's Anglican Church, Brixton.

Sadly, although the building is still there to this day, it ceased to serve as a church in 1980, and later was used as a furniture warehouse. The attendees of St Jude's then merged with nearby St Matthew's Church, on Brixton Hill.

One Stormy Night...

During childhood and adolescence, I grew up as a fan of the Dinosaurs and Darwinian Evolution. Before my conversion towards the end of 1972, I had always rubbished religion and any ideas of Divine Creation. As a boy, I took out the double-page colour illustration of an ancient jungle featuring a Brontosaurus from the Look and Learn, a weekly periodical published for schoolchildren, and taped it on the wall immediately above my bed headboard. Even after my pub conversion, I still heartily believed in Evolution, and the theory that Dinosaurs existed over 60,000,000 years before the advent of mankind.

One evening, I was alone in the house, as my parents and younger brother all went out for the evening. By then, I was already attending St Jude's. I was alone, and outside, a thunderstorm rolled. This was a good opportunity to read my father's Bible, and, curious, I turned to the very beginning, to the first chapter of Genesis.

I read the first three chapters, while mentally, I was begging Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and to try to be like the gods. My tension turned to disappointment when I read that they did eat the fruit. I looked up into the living room, where I was sitting. Although I couldn't see or hear him, I felt as if the Lord was standing right there, in front of me. He was offering me a choice. Either believe what I have just read, or carry on believing in Evolution. Which will I choose? There was no middle ground.

Without hesitation, I immediately believed the Biblical record as history. From that moment, I repudiated all theories of organic Evolution and embraced Divine Creation, the Fall, and the Noachian Deluge.

Little did I know back then that this was another major turning point. It has opened the door to a higher level of education and to future opportunities for World Travel, including the Holy Land.

However, this was also the cause of a widening family split.

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Next Week: Drifting from family life, and a shocking incident.