This is not a regularly updated blog. It's one very long article that my husband once wrote. If you like to comment, you can write to wilwang@bigpond.net.au

My Testimony
By Peter Wilson

I first got interested in the Lord when I was three years old, when dad and my brother and sisters went to church and left me and mom at home, as she was a protestant and dad was a catholic. I was intrigued as to who this God person was.
Eventually, I was taken to church as well and was very excited that I would at last meet this God. I remember coming around the side of a country valley and seeing the church on the other side with a number of cars pulling into the car park. At last we pulled up and I was nearly jumping out of my skin to get inside to see God.
We went in and sat down in one of the pews, about halfway back in the church. Though I didn’t sit down, I was to excited. I stood up, looking around at all the stained glass windows, up at the altar with the cross and statues and then the priest and the altar boys walked out. When he turned around and looked at the congregation, everybody stood up, and I was lost in a sea of adults and couldn’t see anything. Then the priest started speaking in Latin and I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I sat down and became very disillusioned with the church experience.
Later, when I went to school, about the age of four, we were listening to thunder in the heavens, one boy said it was God playing bowls, another said it was the Books of Life that God was opening and closing and when somebody was good or committed a sin, then God opened a book and wrote it down as a record for the day of judgement. This seemed a more likely scenario to me than God playing bowls, so I tended to believe that theory.
I didn’t have many religious experiences between then and seven years old when I made my first communion. Though we used to go church every week, it was always very boring to me and I couldn’t wait to get out. I remember my first communion, when we had to have a practice first, then on the day, we had to use our school uniforms, as they were the best clothes that we had. I expected something verging on the supernatural to happen when we first had communion, but all I got was a strange tasting piece of wafer that stuck to the roof of my mouth, another disappointment.
Then we were taken out of the state school and put into St. Mary’s Catholic school. It was a bit strange the first year, saying prayers before school and before lunch etc. but then, I started to get interested in religion. I joined the Dominic Savio club that was all about this Italian boy who used to fast a lot and sleep on a bed stuffed with sticks and stones, to make it more uncomfortable for him. He also used to kneel on stones when he prayed to suffer and offer it to God for penance. He eventually died from sickness and pneumonia because of his actions. This was supposed to be a good thing to do. I used to get little books and stories about his life when I sent my pocket money away to the club.
I also used to by scapula’s, rosary beads and St. Michael medals and would wear them or carry them with me at all times.
I would go the church on many occasions in my lunch hour to do the Stations of the Cross, that is, to say a full rosary in front of every station of the cross. I so longed to have a real relationship with God, but all I could get was Catholic tradition. I ember going to confession many times and wondering what I could confess, one of my usual ones was not obeying my parents. It was always one “Our Father” and three “Hail Mary’s”.
I could never understand how that was all I need to do to pay for my sins.
I remember when my two sisters, Suzanne and Robyn, made their Confirmation and Paul, my brother, and myself, stayed at home on our own. We had no electricity at the time and only had candles. I was about eight years old and Paul was nine. We heard a lot of creaking in the house and got very scared, so we went and hid in the garage until mom and dad and Sue and Robyn came home. We must have been out there over two hours and were so relieved when those headlights swung into the driveway. We sheepishly stood up and everybody laughed at us for being so silly.
When I made my own Confirmation, I still remember standing with the other school kids discussing what Saints name we were going to have as a Confirmation name, I chose John, Peter James John, kinda had a flow to it. Now I find that Peter, James and John, were Jesus’ closest confidantes.
He used to take them when he went to perform certain miracles, like the raising to life of the young girl that had died and the transfiguration on the mountain, when He met with Elijah and Moses. Simon, who He surnamed Peter; and James and John, whom He called the “Sons of thunder”. (Mark 3:16-17)
I really used to try to get close to God, I must have said thousands of “rosaries” and used to cry in bed for hours because Jesus suffered so much and died on the cross for me. I also used to cry for mom and dad to be saved, as I knew that they were sinners and not going to heaven in their present state. I used to ask God to let me die first so that I could go to heaven first and pray for them up there. I must have prayed for that a hundred times or more. I really wanted to become a priest as I felt that I could get closer to God that way.
I used to get ten out of ten for religion and I loved all the trapping, smells, rituals and traditions that went along with it.
I remember when we had a drought and I used to pray till I cried for rain, then, one day after school, I was walking down the paddock to get the cows, and I saw this small black thing in the sky over Red Rock, a big long rock mountain on the horizon that the sun used to set behind. I watched and prayed until as it got closer, I could see that it was a square cloud that seemed to stop over our farm and suddenly there was a down pour that seemed to be raining on our farm only. I dropped to my knees in the paddock and thanked God with tears of joy streaming down my face. I knew it was a miracle and an answer to my prayers. I then knew God was real and that I had had my first real encounter with Him.
Eventually, I went to State high school, and for the first few months, I was very good at my schoolwork and kept up my prayers. Then I started mixing with the wrong crowd and started swearing and looking at rude books. It was nothing for me to go down the street at lunchtime and steal something; I was very good at it. Eventually, church became a real drag, even though I would still pray on occasion, as I felt conviction of sin or that my relationship with God was waning. Sometimes, I would read the Bible from the set of Encyclopaedia Britannica’s that we had. I used to love to look at all the pictures and read bits and pieces, here and there. I tried to read it from the beginning, but when I got to Numbers, it was so and so beget so and so, it was very boring. So I gave up, unfortunately, I never found the New Testament.
I still used to pray every now and then when I got really hungry for God and browse through the Bible. I still knew somehow, that there was more to this than I had ever been taught in school. When I went to Port Augusta to work, I was about 18, I went to see the Catholic priest at the presbytery to ask him some questions that I had. He had no idea at all about anything, really and I left there feeling a bit ripped off.
One day, in the hotel that I was staying in, I met a priest that had brought a team of footballers from Perth to play in Adelaide. I was having some beers with him in the bar and he said to me, “Wouldn’t it be terrible if, when we died, we found that everything that we believed in was wrong!”
I thought to myself, “If he doesn’t believe in this religion, where does that leave me?”
Then, one day, I was in the back yard of my parent’s house in Henley Beach, (Adelaide) and I was home alone. I asked God, in a fervent prayer, to let His light shine through me to others so that I could help them. I walked inside to the kitchen and something washed over me, I could feel it, and I started speaking in a strange language. (Tongues. Mark 16:17). I had been baptised with the Holy Spirit. I had never heard of “speaking in tongues” so I just thought that I was making it up, even though it was so fluent. All my worries seemed to melt away when I spoke in this language, so I used to sit around and speak to my dog, Rebel, in tongues, because if I told anybody, they would think I was nuts. After this, I had three very significant dreams. The first one started like this; I was in a Catholic church, about halfway down on the left side, I could tell it was a Catholic church by all the pews and stained glass windows and the altar. I was all alone and I was on my knees praying. Suddenly, my back got really hot, and when I turned around, it was raining blood and fire on the church. (Revelation 8:7)
Then I was in the spirit, and taken up into heaven, where I stood before a huge screen with scriptural type writing on it. I looked behind me to see where the light that was shining on the screen was coming from. I saw a beam of light shining out of the darkness onto something that reflected it down onto the screen. There were no stars and I could see the earth below, but it was all black and void. The Holy Spirit, or whom I took to be the Holy Spirit, was standing beside the screen in a white monks habit with His arms folded so you couldn’t see His faces or His hands. There was also a very loud voice that sounded like thousands of voices or one loud voice I couldn’t tell which, booming out over this whole scene. I was very scared, and thought it must be judgement day and that I was being judged. I awoke in a sweat and shaking with fright. I now believe that God had chosen me before the formation of the world to do certain things in this life and that the words on the screen was a prophecy of what I could achieve in Jesus if I obeyed God.
The second dream began in a field, I was walking along in the sunshine, the birds were whistling, the air was fresh, it was a beautiful day. Then I walked down into a ditch or small gully and in the end of the ditch was a door that was set into the earth. I went to the door and opened it, and behind it was a cave hewn out of the earth. It had grass roots and things sticking through the sides of it and at the end of the tunnel, about 6 metres away, was a large ball that had a square hole like an opening in it. It was white and inside was all criss-crossed like it was heavily padded. I stepped into the ball and soon as I did, it started to spin, I was falling this way then that way, it was like being on drugs, a very pleasurable experience. All of a sudden, I was rolled out of a hole into an “L” shaped cave that was very dark, except for a dull red glow that came from around the corner to the right. On the corner, was a pole with a wooden bench to either side on the corner, some shelves on the wall and some old pots and pans that looked as though they had not been used for hundreds of years. Again, I was in the spirit, and something picked me up and tried to drag me around the corner to where the glow was coming from. I grabbed onto the pole on the corner and tried to hang on, but this force just ripped me off the pole and I found myself standing with my back to this big hole. I looked down and I was standing on steel, armour plate ramp, going back down into the earth. I saw the flickering of flames on the walls before me and again, my back got really hot. I realized that I was standing right at the gates of hell, and there was a force trying to pull me back into the fire.
I started to say, “I love Jesus, Jesus is my Saviour, Jesus is my Lord”, suddenly the force pulling me stopped and I almost fell forward. I started walking away and stopped speaking. Suddenly, the force started pulling me back again, so I quickly started to call on Jesus name again and again it stopped. I kept saying it as I walked back to the hole and climbed up through the ball, into the cave. I walked to the door, opened it and walked out; I walked up out of the ditch onto level ground. The sun was shining, the birds were whistling and the air was clear, then I woke up. Again I was sweating and shaking and wondering what it meant.
The third dream began; I was out to sea, about 1 kilometre off shore, I was on a boat that was exactly like Noahs ark, with the big bulbous bottom and the small square room on top that was covered in black pitch. It was nighttime and I looked across to my left to see flickering lights from a town that was on a point of land. I looked to my right and there was an enemy gunship firing onto the land. There were a number of others on board the ark, so I told them to jump off and swim to shore as I was going to turn the ark around and ram the enemy boat. After they jumped off, I turned toward the enemy and headed straight for them. It was night time so they didn’t see me coming till the last moment, when they did, they swung their guns around to fire at me, but it was too late. Just as the ark crashed into the enemy boat, I jumped off and started swimming away. But, as the boats sunk so quickly, I was sucked under with them. I started to swim to the surface, thinking to myself, “I’ll make it, I always do”, but then I stopped swimming and realized that I had drowned. I said to myself, “well, I’m dead now, I may as well wake up”. Again, I awoke in a sweat and in wonder what it all meant.
For many years I wondered about these dreams, and not until I read the Bible and became a Christian, did I find that these things do have a meaning and that God speaks to us in dreams and visions.
I found that God has a purpose and a plan for every person ever born, but that you cannot walk in that plan and purpose until you submit or surrender your life to God. Some people live their whole lives without ever finding out why they are here, that is very sad.
I also found out that there is only one name under heaven that can save you from the fires of hell, and you have to call on that name to be saved, there is salvation in no other, and that name is Jesus.
I also learned that Noah and the ark is also a symbol of baptism, and that in that dream, the ark, (baptism) destroyed the enemy, that it is by full immersion, where you die under water, (to sin,) and raised to a new life.
After this, the Holy Spirit would come to me and tell me to go and get baptised by full immersion, I remember arguing with Him out in the laundry at Henley Beach. I asked Him “where do I go, a Protestant Church, a Lutheran Church, a Baptist Church, I don’t know where to go besides, I argued that I was supposed to be in the “One true church”” as I was taught to believe.
So, He even gave me the name of a guy to go and see, whom I used to get drugs through. He used to go to Bali, cut open his surfboard and fill it with Buddha sticks, a form of marijuana that as very strong. He got caught and sent to prison where he became a Born Again Christian. I didn’t want to get mixed up with any goody-goody Christians and so I made a deal with God, I said that, “ if I don’t settle down in the world, by the time I hit thirty five, then I would find Him then, even if I had to become a priest, a monk or a nun, (I was being a little sarcastic) then I would find Him then. This was about the age of 21 and a lot of things happened to me between then and the age of 35. For one, I had an increased conscience of sin and felt very guilty when I was doing something wrong, but I persevered and it soon went away.
Over the years, I went to see a number of priests around the country, and only found one that had any clue at all. God always reminded me of my promise to Him, but I couldn’t see how it was ever going to happen seeing the depth of sin that I was living in.
One time, I went to see Uncle Sax and Auntie Hazel, she believed that she could read tea leaves. I had my girlfriend with me at the time, Anne, and she read her tea leaves, she said that she would be taking a long trip by plane, (which she did, a few months later), I asked her to read mine, and she picked up my cup, and a look of horror came over her face, she cupped her hand over her mouth and literally ran out of the room. We looked at each other in disbelief at her reaction, and no amount of cajoling could get her to say a word, but she just had this look of fear on her face. It worried me for some time just what she saw; now I believe that she saw that I was her spiritual enemy because I had the Holy Spirit on me.
When I was in Dorrigo, I rented a house for about fourteen months. When I first went there, every-body said that it was impossible to get a house as everybody had already tried, but I knew from previous experience, that I had God’s favour on my life. I told them that I would get one and went into the only real estate agent in town and he gave me a name of some people in Armidale whom I rang up and then went to see. They allowed me to rent a farmhouse on a recognized lookout over the Dorrigo range, about 5 kms out of town. No one could believe that I could get a house so quick. After I had been there for fourteen months, the rats got to bad and I wrote to the owners and told them that they should do something about them or they would chew through the wiring and set the house on fire. I bought a caravan and moved into town and a friend called Peter Jackerman took it over. He had been there about three weeks and I went to see him on the Thursday night before I went to Brisbane for the weekend. When I got back on Monday, I was supposed to go to his place that night for dinner. Some-one at work said,” bad luck about Peter Jackerman, eh?” then he told me that he had been burnt to death on the Saturday night. I went out to the house at lunchtime, as I had all my worldly possessions in the garage there. I had burnt off all the grass around the shed a few weeks before and it wasn’t touched. When I pulled up, I saw a wisp of smoke rising from where the lounge room used to be. I walked over and that’s where Peter’s burnt bones lay, but there was no smouldering ashes there. I picked up a bit of skull with the little dotted line across it and it turned into dust as I rubbed it between my fingers. The grass was burnt for 50 metres all around and even the broken edges of the toilet were melted. When I left, I looked back and there was no smoke there now, I thought that was a bit strange. I wondered what they buried in the coffin as all his bones were still lying at the house. The first rain would dissolve them into the ground. That night, when I was talking about him, when I said his name, the lights went on and off. It freaked me out a bit and whenever I said his name after that, it was the same thing. I even said to people,”hey, watch this.” And say his name. This continued all the time I was in Dorrigo. When I moved to Port Macquarie, I thought that I would try it and they flickered once and it never happened after that. I believe that this was a familiar spirit, not Peter’s spirit, as the bible says that we all sleep until judgement, of course that will seem to be immediate as soon as we die, we will open our eyes to the judgement seat of Christ, where we will all appear. Then the books will be opened and have our deeds on earth judged. If our name is not in Lamb’s book of Life, then we get thrown into the lake of fire, the second death. Time is not relevant in the hereafter, “a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years as one day”. So for those that died 6 thousand years ago or those that die on that “Day of the Lord” it will seem to be immediately.
A familiar spirit is one that stays in a family from generation to generation, causing the same problems in each generation, in Peter’s case, his father died in a fire at exactly the same age, for others, it may be cancer, or heart disease or even a car accident or suicide.
I also looked into alternative religions, astral travelling, spirit guides and the like. I was staying with a girl on the Gold Coast, right in Surfers Paradise, she was renowned as a fortune teller and had her own shop right in the Paradise Plaza, near the beach, where she sold all sorts of New Age, astrology and other demonic paraphernalia. She used to have a spiritual meeting every Saturday night, where two girls would work together, one would go into a trance and the demons, or the dead relatives, as they believed, would speak to all the people in the circle around the table. I went to one of these meetings to se what was going on, they started by saying the “Our Father”, as if to give it some religious credibility, then one by one, the “spirit” would speak to each person in the circle. When I spoke to me, it said that it was a spirit of an old man that used to watch me stealing apples off his trees after school, but I refused to acknowledge it and said I didn’t ever do it.
A couple of days later, this girl asked me if I would like her to read my “cards”, I said sure, why not. When she turned over the first card, she told me that I would meet a girl she would have red hair and she would be called “the dark one”, she turned up another card and said that we would get engaged but never married. The next card said that we would have a child, but I would not know if the child was mine or not and this would happen around my thirty fifth year, (I was about 28 at the time). Then she turned over the next card and looked really shocked, she quickly packed up the cards and said that she wanted me to move out that day. I didn’t know what to think, I asked her what she saw, and why she wanted me to move out, but she would only say angrily, that she wanted me out, today.
Good thing that my parents lived on the Gold coast at the time, so I moved back in with them for a while.
Now I know, that not only does God have a plan for your life, but so does Satan, if you open a door for him to come in, as I did by allowing that girl to speak these things over my life. I met a girl who had red hair and her name was Kerry, which means “the dark one”, everything that she said, came to pass, I can only think that she also saw that I had the Holy Spirit, and that I would become her enemy when I fully became a Christian.
When I went to Cairns, it was there that I met Kerry; we truly loved each other, and got engaged. We moved back to Port Macquarie and set up a T-shirt shop. This was a dismal failure, so we closed it down and Kerry ended getting a job working in the Tourist Information place in town. They sent her to Lismore to do a course, and it was there that she met Harry. They were just good friends, at first, she begged me to take her away from Port Macquarie as if I didn’t, she was afraid that she might stray. I had landed the best job that I had ever had, and didn’t want to chuck it in. Unfortunately, her fears were realized and 2 months before we were to be married, she went around Australia with Harry, she told me that she was going on her own and just wanted to see Australia before she settled down. I suspected that she was going with Harry, but they were very sneaky about it and they met up in Brisbane after taking different buses. I was very distraught when she left, and ended up working for 3 days straight, all night on two jobs and including a 580km round trip as well. I slept about 4 hours in-between. I kept writing her letters and calling her when I could, I was nearly going to fly to Perth to bring her home, when she said she would be home in a couple of weeks. I anxiously awaited her arrival and couldn’t stop hugging her when she got off the bus. She didn’t have the heart to tell me about Harry, as she didn’t want to hurt me. She told me about 2 months later, that she was pregnant, then when I came home a couple of nights later, she was in tears and very upset. She must have summoned all her strength to tell me that the child was not mine. I was furious, I called her a number of terrible names, and I swore that I would kill Harry, and would have, if I knew where he lived.
I waited outside his work for two hours, one night, I was going to follow him home and bash him to death. Eventually, I cooled a little, but still wanted to kill him if I got the chance. I eventually found out where he lived and used to drive by really slowly to see if I could spot him.
One day, after I came back from work, Kerry wasn’t home, I immediately thought that she may be over Harry’s place. I drove straight over there and saw them coming toward me on the other side of road. I turned around and followed them. They stopped outside the bowling club, I pulled up beside them, and so she drove to the other side of the road to let them out. I just pulled up behind them and went to the passenger side door. Harry stepped out and I grabbed him around the throat and started to punch him in the face as hard as I could. I must have hit him 20-30 times, when this big guy, about 6’8”, stepped between us and said “that’s enough, go home”. I said “This is between him and me, step out of the way”, but he just repeated, “Enough, go home”. I looked around him at Harry and warned him to stay away from my woman, or next time, I would kill him. I went home and Kerry followed a short time later. Everything seemed to be going good for about a year when Kerry went home to Cairns for a holiday. While I was driving her car, I found a key that looked like a sliding door key, Harry had a sliding door on his flat!
I knew that Harry used to go to his mothers place every Sunday for dinner, so I planned to go to his place on the Sunday to see if the key fitted his door. As I approached his door, I hoped that I was wrong, but my heart sank as the key went straight in and turned to unlock the door. With a heavy and sickening feeling, I went in to look around. There was evidence that Kerry had been there recently, and a note written on his message board confirming her love for him. I felt devastated and went home. That night, I got on my knees and pleaded with God to send some one or do something to get out of this mess. I prayed and cried and prayed again. Eventually I went to bed. The next night, I received a phone call from Steve Baldwin, a friend of mine, who had moved back to Cairns and was coming down for a holiday to see some friends in Brisbane as well as Port Macquarie. He was coming down on the Wednesday night and we planned to go out for a few beers. We started by smoking a couple of joints, and then went out to the Tavern, we left the Tavern to go to the Macquarie Hotel and there was a fellow handing out pamphlets on the street. One was on the Holy Spirit, one on Baptism by full immersion, another on speaking in tongues and one on healing. Everybody else just screwed them up and threw them in the gutter, but I stayed and talked with him for a little while. He invited me to church, but I said that I was a Catholic. I thanked him and left. I took all the pamphlets home, and looked up all the scriptures on them. I sat up till after 3 o’clock and was quite angry that the Catholic Church had not told me these things that it was required by God that we should do. Still, this other church, speaking in tongues, sounded like some kind of Middle Eastern religion, and I didn’t want to get mixed up with them.
I thought that I would try to go back to the Catholic church again, though I had tried a number of times, but always felt dissatisfied as they went through their meaningless, religious programme and I always left still hungry for something real, that affected me, something with substance.
Nevertheless, I went to see the priest again, I went to confession for the first time in years, and still had to say one “Our Father and three Hail Mary’s”.
The priest told me to come to the presbytery each week and tell him my life story. As the weeks went by, he told me that I had to be subject to him and when he asked for “a bit of hair”, I had to lean forward and he would pull hair from the top of my head. He said that he did it to all the altar boys. Eventually, he said that I needed to be humbled, so he said that he was going to take me down the Main St., along the break-wall, back along the break-wall, back up the Main St. and back to the presbytery.
I went home and thought about it and thought it would humble me alright, humble me so much that I’d have to leave town. I rang him up and said, “If God can forgive me, then I could forgive her, so let’s just forget about it.” I then determined that I had had enough of the Catholic Church and I wasn’t going back. Kerry came back from holiday and we got back together. A few months later, I went to Coffs Harbour to do some kitchen installations and the lady that owned the branch up there, told me a story, her name was Marilyn Rosin. She told me that she had gone out to see another lady about a kitchen and she was sitting in a car overlooking the headland. This lady was a Christian and she was telling her all about the Holy Spirit and then she (Marilyn) said “ you probably think I am stupid, but I swear I saw Jesus walking on the water and soon as I did, I started speaking in tongues”. I was taken aback, I didn’t know anybody personally that had had that experience and got her to tell me all about it.
I came back to Port a couple of days later and noticed that, even though she was a very nice lady before, she was even nicer now, very peaceful and generous. I didn’t do anything myself after this, but not long afterwards, I had an accident in Taree that was my fault. They were going to sue me for over $10,000 for damage to a new Alfa Romeo. I kept putting it off and sending them letters. Soon after this, I installed a kitchen for a couple that were quite famous, in some circles, for their deliverance ministry and the books they had written on the subject. He told me all about the Holy Spirit and how sometimes you could sense the Holy Spirit by a sweet smell in the room. This was all strange to me, and when I told my father, he said “Stay away from those people, their crazy.” So again I did nothing, but it did make me wonder. About one week later, I had an argument with Kerry about the phone bill, she made a lot of calls to Cairns and the bills were always over $350 dollars. I went o work, and when I came home, I brought some flowers and chocolates to soothe the situation. When I got home, she wasn’t there; I had a sick feeling in my stomach, and drove over to Harry’s place. Sure enough, her car was there. I had a club in the car and I was going to take it in and beat him to death with it. But something told me not to take it, so I thought I would just punch him to death. I was going to walk up and kick the glass door in, but found myself knocking on the door. When I was let in, Cale, my son, ran to me and hugged me. I picked him up and said to Kerry that she had broken my heart for the last time. I put Cale down and walked out. As I was walking away, I thought, “that’s not what I came here for”, I was just about to turn around and go back in when a voice as clear as a bell and very firmly spoke into my right ear, “ NOW, GO AND GET BAPTIZED!” It was a real shock, I new it was God that spoke to me and so I determined to get baptised that Sunday. When I went to the church, it had moved and I had to find out where they moved to. They got a bit of a shock when I walked in and said I wanted to get baptised. They said that their Pastor wasn’t there that weekend and that they would baptise me on the Wednesday house meeting. They tried to get me to receive the Holy Spirit, and get me to pray in tongues, but I didn’t know how to pray. We gave up and so I went home again disappointed. When I went to the house meeting, they had a large fibreglass bath that looked a bit like a coffin. I didn’t expect anything to happen, just go under the water, get wet then come out, at least I would have been obedient to what the Lord required of me, but I didn’t want to join their group. When I got into the tank, and sat down, the pastor asked if I believed that Jesus died for my sins and that He died and rose again to life. I confessed that I believed that, then he laid me back right under the water. As soon as I broke the surface of the water I felt different, I felt cleaner somehow, like my sins were washed away and then I got out and got dressed. I went around and met all the people and had the strangest feeling that I had come home, even though I didn’t know one person there. Again they took me into a private room to pray to receive the Holy Spirit. As we prayed, I started to speak in the same tongue that I spoke when I was 21; I was now 35, (the age I promised God that I would find Him when I was 21. I am so glad that He is so gracious and so faithful to allow me enough rope and still love me enough to bring me into His family, even though I grieved the Holy Spirit all those years). I felt sure that I was just making it up so I stopped and just kept saying Hallelujah, for that’s what they told me to say. I went home and knew that I had changed somehow, I felt uncomfortable being in the same house as Kerry now as we were still staying together. We were still staying in the same bed, but I couldn’t stay there any more, I lay right on the edge of the bed, but could not get far enough away. I said that I had to go to the other room, but Kerry said she would go. When I went to work, I couldn’t stay in the same room as someone if they were swearing. It was if they were pelting me with stones. Sin, any sin was so abhorrent to me, I couldn’t stay in the same room as anybody doing anything wrong. It took about six months for it to ease down. I stopped drinking and smoking and using drugs, though I tried to keep up smoking and drinking for a couple of weeks, but I couldn’t stand it and had to give it up. I had the best grass that I had ever grown, it was very, very strong, one small joint between five people and they still couldn’t finish it. I had one small puff and I couldn’t stand it, I new straight away that it was wrong and I repented and asked God’s forgiveness for hours until I was straight again. I was going to sell the dope and give the money to the church, but the Holy Spirit said He didn’t want the money; I couldn’t even give it away. So, even though it took a lot of courage, I put in the toilet and flushed it away. Probably between $1-2,000 worth of dope, down the toilet. About a week after I was baptised, I went to the Pastors house for dinner, his wife said to keep praying to receive the Holy Spirit, so on the way home, I thought, what the heck, I would just go with what I had and by the time I got home, I was speaking fluently in tongues. I was still not convinced that I wasn’t just making it up until after the Easter break, when I went to a Christian camp. Every morning of the camp, whoever wanted could pray in tongues for an hour before the morning meeting. I thought that I would try it out as I had only spoke in tongues for a few minutes before. I went to the tent and sat down, I felt a bit conspicuous, as I was still a new Christian. I proceeded to pray in tongues and after about 50 minutes, all the meaning of all the dreams that I had, and all that had happened to me up to that time was explained to me in the twinkling of an eye. It was as if God gave me instant understanding, I started to weep for joy because I knew it was real, and I couldn’t stop weeping and laughing, at the same time, it was a glorious experience. I had to drive to Sydney the same day from Foster and was laughing and crying the whole way. One thing that was a bit strange was that after I was baptised, I couldn’t stop reading the Bible. I would have to read at least ten chapters, of the bible, before I went to work, I just couldn’t get enough. I soaked up every bit of Christian literature that I could lay my hands on and was always spending $100 or more at the Christian bookshop.
After this, I tried to explain my experience to my friends and family but everybody thought that I had been brainwashed or something. I guess I may have too, if I had been in their position. All I wanted was for them all to experience the feeling of knowing that your right with God and that there was a place reserved in heaven for them, if they received Jesus like I had, not a religion or church or group, but a personal relationship with your Creator and Saviour and have Him talk to you as in a conversation.
Sometimes, the Holy Spirit will tell you a revelation that is so deep that you know it straight from God; the wisdom is so simple and so deep.
Other times it is another way to do a job to make it easier and to achieve a better finish at the same time. When I teach these things to other installers they wonder at the simplicity and finish they get by doing this way. The Holy Spirit is always teaching me new ways of doing things; it’s great to have a teacher like that. When they ask me who told me these things and I tell them “The Holy Spirit told me” they go all quiet and drop the subject.
I went through a real desert experience when I first came to the Lord, as far as relationships went. As for Kerry, she gave me the choice that if I gave up “all this religious stuff” then we would get back together and get married. Even though I still loved her after all that had happened, and I loved Cale dearly, I couldn’t turn away from God now that I had eventually found Him. So I had to make a choice between Kerry and Cale and God, I had to choose God, finally I had found what I had been searching for all my life and I wasn’t going to let it go at any price, even if it cost me all my family or even my life. I had discovered why the early Christians freely lay down their lives for their faith, it is a precious thing to know and be known by Jesus.
I told God that if He wanted me to stay in Port Macquarie, then I wanted a house of my own. Two days later, I got a letter in the mail saying that I was eligible for a Homefund loan, a low interest loan that was partially paid off by the government. When I went in to apply for it, they said that they don’t know how I got the letter, as I wasn’t on the list. They said that I could re-apply if I liked, so I did, it cost $20 to apply. Within the week, I had the loan; this was a miracle, as I couldn’t get a loan from any bank or building society.
A few years later I used to thank God for my beautiful wife and two beautiful children every day when I came home from work, though I saw no sign of a wife on the horizon, so to speak, I just believed in faith that God would be faithful to His word.
I went to a week of big meetings in Sydney when the big move of the Holy Spirit was sweeping over the world. In these meetings, I had a number of visions, in one vision I saw Jesus face to face, He came out of a door at the top of a number of steps, His face shone like the sun and His robe was white and glistening with gold dust and He had a golden sash around His waist. He walked own the steps and stood on the step above where I was standing, the Holy Spirit said to me, “Don’t worry about the things that are going on around you, just keep your eyes on Jesus”.
The vision meant that there are a number of steps in the Lord, but Jesus will not leave or forsake you, He is always waiting on the next step to help you when you get there. In another vision, I saw God on the throne, with Jesus sitting at His right hand with angels all around. It was while the whole congregation of 2-3,000 were praising Him and there was gold dust floating down all around, what a glorious sight.
In yet another vision, I was in a dark room and running around in it trying to catch something, but I couldn’t see what I was chasing, then a door opened and I saw a spider on the floor and I crushed it under my foot. A girl with big round glasses, long dark hair and quite thin, with a big smile, was standing in the doorway. A voice told me “This is your wife”, I said to the Lord, “I don’t even know anybody like this and besides, my wife has to have brown hair and be a bit more shapely”. The Lord spoke again and said “No, this your wife.” Then I was taken in the spirit around the whole stadium and back into my body again.
I really didn’t believe it but I didn’t forget it. Then I found out that the company that I worked for had a stake in a company in China and they had a job going in Beijing. I told a fellow on a job that I was doing in Sydney while I was there about the visions and he was a yuppie Buddhist. He freaked out and told his mother who told my boss. I was called into the office at Taree to get the sack, but they let me off, the boss then said that he didn’t have to become a Christian as he always did the right thing and that was good enough. I told him that if he needed someone to go to China, then I was available. He said that he would think about it. As I was leaving, the Holy Spirit told me that the company would go broke, I asked Him if it would be before or after I went to China, but He didn’t answer. As it turned out, they went broke a week after I got back.
I went to Melbourne to install the boss’s brother’s kitchen and the boss rang me to say that I could go to China. I eventually went to China in January, about eight months after the vision. When I got there, I tried to find a Christian church, but it took me three weeks to locate. I eventually went to a Chinese church, but it was all in Chinese, but as I was leaving, I met an American and I asked him if he knew of a Christian church. He told me that there was a church being held in the Sino- Japanese theatre. I quickly got a taxi and raced over there as quick as I could. I got there as it was just finishing. I went down to the front and introduced myself to one of the Pastors. He invited me to lunch and so I went with him to a restaurant called “Thank God it’s Friday”, an American style restaurant. When I sat down, I sat right beside Susan, my now wife, and exactly the girl in the vision. I thought that she was really cute and very nice. It wasn’t until a few months later that we started to see each other. Out of 1.1 Billion people, God led me to the very girl in the vision, another miracle. Susan was not supposed to be in the meeting as local people were not allowed by the government to go there or else they would close it down. She used to go maybe once a year and only when her Pastor went back to America.
I was I Shanghai for four days; I had just come back from Hong Kong and had a suitcase full of bibles and teaching books. I got there Friday night and on the Saturday, I went for a walk through the city. Before I left, I asked the Lord to allow me to shine His light into some-one’s life that day. On that day, there was a festival in the city and there must have been at least a million people in Nanjing road, the main street in Shanghai. I walked down to the Bund, a river in Shanghai, all the way down the street, there were people playing Chinese instruments and selling things at stalls etc. On the way back a guy came up and started talking to me, I said to the Lord, “He must be the one”. I got him to show me the museum and a bookshop as well as some hardware stores as I needed to get some screws and things to assemble some cupboards on the Monday to show a local company how to assemble and install kitchens. I took him back to the hotel and gave him a bible and some books and asked him to come back on Sunday to show me the markets. It was raining steadily on the Sunday, so I showed him some scriptures that he could read in a Chinese bible so as to understand it. I showed him his need to repent, to confess that he was a sinner, to be baptised by full immersion and to be baptised in the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues, after he read it for himself, I told him that he needed to make a decision. He said that he wanted to get baptised. As I was staying in a 5 star hotel, I had a bathtub and went and filled it with water. He stripped right off, I offered him a pair of shorts, but he said it didn’t matter, (I explained later that if he baptised anybody, they didn’t have to be naked, I hope he understood!) after he confessed that he believed that Jesus died for his sins and rose again on the third day, I baptised him under the water. When he came out after dressing, I was waiting in the other room, he asked me “Why do I feel so different?” I explained that when you make Jesus your Saviour and get baptised into His name, all your sins are washed away. We prayed for him to receive the Holy Spirit and then he went home. I got him to come back the next day to translate for me and he told me of a dream that he had had two years before. In this dream, an American came and told him all about God. He knew no Christians and had only heard a bit of a Christian radio broadcast from Hong Kong. To him, I was an American, as he had never even heard of Australia. It’s amazing how God knew that I would be on that street in that exact place, two years before I was even there, what an awesome God we have.
Since then, God has blessed me abundantly in all things, and I have met many people in my work that have been looking for God and I have told them how to find Him. Many times, they are there by default, that is they should have been at another job, but circumstances brought them to the job the same day as me. One guy went out to his car and said the prayer I told him and when he came back in, he was laughing and crying at the same time, he as baptised by the Holy Spirit as he prayed in his car, he couldn’t thank me enough and was ecstatic all the time he was there.
My testimony goes on and this is only a few brief parts of it. Please forgive me if I have offended you by my zeal, but it was only to make sure that you got into Heaven, as I do love you all very very much, even if I don’t show it, I don’t think that any of us are very good at that.
I know that God is real and there is a way to seek Him, but it must be His way, not man’s way. We must obey His words, not man’s tradition. Jesus was critical of the religious leaders of His day when He said, “By your tradition, you make the power of God of none effect!) Tradition will not get you into Heaven, for that you must be born again. ( John 3 ) This means that your spirit becomes alive to God, not that you rediscover your faith, or become religious. You become aware of God and reading His word, the Bible, is like taking a long, refreshing drink of water and eating a good meal, spiritually satisfying.
I will leave it there, and hope that you all find God, His way and enjoy His favour both now and forever.
May God make it easy for you to find Him.