Hello to everyone, G'Day to members from Down Under (both sides of the Tasman) and Kia Ora to my fellow-Kiwis here. Fair warning: long post ahead. In fact, it's so long that I've had to split it into two parts.
I guess I'll start this introduction with some general remarks, then get into my testimony proper. So, I am 49 years old and live in Wellington, New Zealand. My avatar picture is a photo of Oriental Bay in Wellington that I took on my phone when walking there one day. I am by no means a professional photographer, but I do like taking snaps on my phone when out sometimes. By profession, I am a freelance translator, and I greatly enjoy languages. My working languages are German, French and Spanish, but I am also studying an assortment of other languages on a site called Duolingo. I enjoy writing and have kept a diary for more than 30 years. A few months ago, I also started a Christian blog, which you can read here if you like:
https://isaiah4212.blogspot.com/. I am single and shamefully, still live with my parents. I have a number of collections, some large and some small. It is fair to say that covetousness has been one of the besetting sins of my life. Some other besetting sins that have characterised too much of my existence on this earth have included pride, lasciviousness and slothfulness.
So that covers the basics, I think. Now to dive deeper. The first thing to say is that I was raised in a Christian home. A more accurate description of my home environment would be
ostensibly Christian. It was actually very worldly. Something I came to realise quite a while ago is that neither of my parents are born again. My father could probably best be described as an agnostic nowadays. However, during my childhood he made some sort of Christian profession. But he has long since dropped that pretence. My mother still identifies as Christian, but she is a false convert if ever there was one. Her "conversion" occurred at a Billy Graham crusade held at Athletic Park (which used to be Wellington's main stadium; it was demolished some years ago) in February 1959. She was 17 at the time. In her late teens and 20s, she was quite involved in Youth for Christ (which I think was set up by Billy Graham, or one of his organisations). She attended a Methodist church, but some of her closest friends were Pentecostals, and as a result of this, the faith that she developed was a rather curious Methodist/Pentecostal hybrid.
My father was born and bred in Wellington, as I have been. His mother was a Christian Scientist, but thankfully that had no real influence on him. His father was a Rosicrucian, but I don't think that was a very big part of his life. Still, not ideal spiritual influences. My mother on the other hand was born in Inverness during the Second World War. However, her parents were from the Shetland Islands, and they flew back there with her when she was six months old. One of her earliest and most vivid memories is being out in a garden with her grandmother (not sure if it was the paternal or maternal one) when German planes came overhead and shot at them. She remembers her grandmother hurrying back into the house with her while bullets thudded into the ground all around them. By the grace and mercy of God, neither she nor her grandmother were hurt that day. It really says something about those Nazis though, that they would shoot at an elderly woman and a three-year-old girl. As a result of that early memory, my mother has had a lifelong hatred of guns. I wasn't even allowed to have a toy gun growing up. While I don't share my mother's hatred of guns, and think the Second Amendment is a definite good thing, I'm not really into them either. Wouldn't know a Colt from a Smith & Wesson, for example. But that's by the by.
My mother came to New Zealand with her parents and younger brother when she was ten years old. It being the early 1950s, they came on a ship. My mother's younger brother was only three at the time. He and my mother are estranged nowadays. He's an atheist. Although he had four children who are my first cousins, I have never really known them. As my mother and her brother grew up, he was very spoiled, which soured relations between them. When she "converted" at that Billy Graham crusade, the hostility on his part increased. After my maternal grandparents died, there were all sorts of dramas between my mother and her brother over the will of my grandmother in particular, but as Paul would say, I spare you. My dad meanwhile also has a brother (two years older than him). He doesn't have a great deal to do with him, but there is a little more cordiality between them. My dad's brother cheated on his first wife with the woman who is now his second wife. The latter is not a particularly nice person and may actually be a witch. She is certainly into witchcraft. In fact, many years ago she threatened to put a hex on my mother! She may have been joking, but my mother was not amused and my dad reckons she was serious. So that hasn't exactly been good for the fraternal relationship on my dad's side.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is a place of some significance to me. In the 1960s, both my parents worked there, and this is where they met. When my father started working at the Bank, he was still a university student and living at home. My mother is 5 1/2 years older than him, but she was also living at home (although she had done a bit of flatting for a couple of years, i.e. living in apartments). My mother has said that the Lord told her she was going to marry my dad. (I'm not sure what spirit spoke to her, but I am quite certain it was not the God of the Bible. At the time, my dad was not a believer, so why would God tell my mother to be unequally yoked? He did have some sort of "conversion" though, but I have the cynical suspicion that he only professed Christianity so he could marry my mother.) In 1970, they married in the Methodist church my mother attended. On Valentine's Day and all. Apparently, they didn't actually realise it was Valentine's Day until later. They wanted to get married on a Saturday in February, and Valentine's Day happened to fall on a Saturday in 1970. Now, I realise that Valentine's Day is really quite a pagan thing (I have read the article on this site about it, and have also read elsewhere about its pagan origins), but the one upside of them marrying on that day is that it made their wedding anniversary easy to remember! They moved into a house they had bought before getting married (although they did not consummate their relationship until after the wedding - nowadays, my dad supports and even advocates living with someone before marriage, i.e. the sin of fornication, but back then he went along with my mother's wishes). I made my entry into the world two years later. After marriage, my mother left the Reserve Bank, but my father continued to work there until 1990, when he was made redundant due to restructuring. (He soon found other work in the financial sector, but it was a bit of a shock to the system at the time.) I have many memories of visiting the Bank. By a rather strange twist of fate, the place where my dad ended up working moved its offices into the Reserve Bank building for a while! By the time he retired in 2011 however, it had shifted premises again.
Earlier I shared that one of my mother's earliest childhood memories was a pretty unpleasant one (being shot at by the Luftwaffe during the Second World War). Well, one of my own earliest memories is not too nice either. Sitting in my high-chair one day and drinking a cup of milk, I knocked it over and spilled it everywhere. It wasn't deliberate, but just the natural clumsiness little kids have. My mother cleaned up the mess, of course, and also did something else: she hit me. I have a vivid memory of her slapping my face and left arm. I also remember it happening in "waves" - she would retreat into the kitchen to do some work, then advance towards me and hit me again while yelling something. This happened maybe four or five times. I also have other memories, mainly from the first ten years of my life, of being screamed at, slapped in the face and spanked with my pants down, usually in sessions lasting about 20 minutes. Many of these punishments were for no obvious reason. On at least one occasion, my mother clearly manufactured a reason to hit me. She told me to "stop doing that" with my mouth, but never specified what "that" was. I genuinely had no clue what she was on about. After repeating this command to my increasing bewilderment, she then took my pants down and spanked me for my "disobedience". At least I was spared a more prolonged session of screaming and slaps that time.
These actions by my mother produced evil fruit. This is not what chastening should do. The chastening of the Lord, or of godly parents, should produce
peaceable fruit of righteousness (Hebrews 12:11). However, the chastening of my mother produced great anger and resentment within me. It also produced another very wicked fruit: a spanking fetish. (I have read the forum rules, and I don't want to violate them, especially in my first post, or any other post for that matter. But this has been a particularly significant area of sin in my life, so I feel I have to say something about it. I want to be open and transparent while hopefully not being inappropriate. But I certainly won't be offended if Christopher, or Timothy, or Jeanne, or whoever else moderates this forum, decides to edit this paragraph.) The fetish began when I was about 10 or 11. It may have even started earlier, actually. I won't go into any gory details about it, but I hope it's safe enough to say this much: I have never actually indulged the fetish physically, purely due to a lack of opportunity (although I want to stress that I grieve over this as much as any other sin now and no longer want anything to do with it). It has all been in the imagination. I started having very vivid fantasies at that young age and it went from there. But I certainly fed my imagination in adult years by visiting various Web sites, forums and even buying online magazines (which I have subsequently deleted). Spanking fetishes come in quite a wide variety. Some people like giving them, others like receiving them, still others enjoy both. Then you get people who enjoy certain types of implements, and so on. My own specific "thing" revolved around the receiving aspect, and the "giver" had to be a woman. It didn't matter who the "receiver" was (it could be me, or someone I was reading about), just as long as a woman was dishing it out. (That's about the most G-rated way I can express it.) I also used to have fantasies of being dominated by a woman or women - all quite demonic, looking back on it. These wicked fantasies had two root causes. The first was what my mother did to me in childhood. (She has also been very domineering towards my dad over the years, so that was another factor.) The second was the corruption of my own flesh and heart. Notwithstanding what my mother did, I can't blame her for my own evil choices. While the sins of others against us can certainly
predispose us to certain behaviours, we still make the choice to indulge them. In the eyes of God, my mother is responsible for her own evil choices, and I am responsible for mine. Still, there is something of a correlation between her sins and mine.
Before I move on, I need to point out that due to what my mother did, and also due to my own sins of the mind in this area, I have done a Jacob, as it were, and had something of a wrestling match with God over spanking and child discipline generally. How to reconcile what the Scriptures say with what my mother put me through and the perversion that resulted? Well, with God's gracious help, I have come to these conclusions. Firstly, it helps to study not only the usual verses in Proverbs, but all Biblical passages about God's chastening. Godly chastening of children should reflect God's chastening of us. It should certainly be somewhat unpleasant, but it should also be
just. Matthew 5:22 tells us not to be angry without a cause, and this should apply to parents' dealings with children. The purpose of corporal punishment (and for that matter, rebuke and reproof) should be to correct wrong behaviour. It should teach the child that sinful behaviour has unpleasant consequences. And as I said above, it should yield good fruit in terms of repentance and improved behaviour. My mother, however, often got angry without a cause and punished me unjustly. Furthermore, her punishments were really about domination and control, not discipline. A second conclusion that I have reached is that spanking a child with their pants down is wicked. I'd even go so far as to say it's downright satanic. For one thing, the Bible never commands that to be done (beating with the rod, yes, taking pants down, no). Other passages in the Bible command modesty. God wants us to train our children to be modest, among other things. Taking their pants down to punish them flies in the face of that. Then there is the fruit that it bore in my own life, as described above. I have also read things by other people that strongly indicate a close correlation between spanking a child with their pants down and the subsequent development of sexual fetishes. They also indicate, in some instances, a fetish on the part of the parent. (Some of those people may have been passing off fantasies as true stories, but enough of them seemed credible to make me think there's something in it - in any case, some of the accounts I read were on anti-spanking sites, where there would be less motivation to make things up for titillation.) Then too, there is the fact that all sites devoted to adult spanking themes have one common denominator: exposed buttocks. (As above, I'll understand if this is edited out; however, in order to show this work of darkness for what it is, I feel this point is particularly important.) Whatever else they might do differently, that is the one thing they all do the same. It is the absolute centrepiece around which all other aspects of the fetish revolve. I really can't stress that enough.
A third conclusion that I have reached is that child discipline is a bit like music, books or whatever in that there is a godly kind, and then also an ungodly kind. Godly discipline is just, moderate and yields good fruit in a child's life. Its express purpose is to correct sinful behaviour and bring about repentance. Another positive outcome of godly discipline is that it teaches a child good boundaries. Ungodly discipline on the other hand is frequently unjust, excessive and produces evil fruit in a child. Wrongful punishment is almost as bad as leaving a child to himself. In both cases, the child develops either poor boundaries or none at all. It is not always associated with sexual perversion, but that can be a factor sometimes, especially when a child's modesty is violated, as mine repeatedly was. It is NEVER a factor in godly discipline though. A fourth and final conclusion is that an implement should be used. The KJV advocates a "rod". It never speaks of striking with the hand.
Only modern versions use the word "spanking". If you look up the word "spank" in a dictionary, it means strike with an open hand. No reference to an implement. Why would God want an implement to be used? Well IMO, because it makes more impact through clothing. The hand alone doesn't sting much through clothing. Moreover, when a hand is placed on the buttocks, there is an intimacy associated with that, even if said hand is hitting them. That's why some people like to express affection with a playful smack on the rear end. An implement is not intimate like that. So use of an implement through clothing is, in my view, how God wants corporal punishment to be done, when it has to be done.
But for all her physical and emotional abuse, my mother also spoiled me. This was the flip side of growing up with her. I was coddled, pampered and extremely sheltered. There were good aspects to this. I never got involved in drinking or fornication, or whatever else my schoolmates were into. When they were out partying, I was home studying or watching TV with my parents. Another good thing my mother did was warn me about the occult, although sometimes, she got a bit over-zealous in that area. But there was plenty of evil fruit as well. For one thing, while my mother often punished me unjustly, she also let me get away with things that I actually
should have been punished for! You can imagine the moral confusion that created in me. There were actually times when I was justly punished, usually by my dad, or a grandparent, or a teacher, so I didn't get away with every wicked thing I did as a child. I give sincere thanks to God for that now. There were also a few occasions when even my mother punished me justly, but far more times when she did it unjustly. Another evil fruit of her pampering was that I learned to be slothful. I never had to do any chores. Everything was done for me. So I never learned how to take responsibility for anything. I was never taught. So I was never trained for life in the adult world. Instead, I was trained to be a perpetual child. Such practical skills as I managed to acquire while growing up, I basically taught myself. However, when I went to university, I did learn to drive and succeeded in getting a full licence. But I never got a car of my own, and I eventually let my driving slip (I am only just starting to pick it up again now).
We have never been much of a church-going family. For a while during the 1970s, we attended a Baptist church (Tawa Baptist, in case any New Zealand members are familiar with it). Why it was a Baptist church and not a Methodist one, I don't know - maybe it was the most popular church in town or something. Eventually however, my parents stopped attending because they did not want to be baptised. (Very sensible given that they're not actually saved.) Since then, I don't think they have ever gone to another church (other than for weddings and funerals, of course). I myself have only been to one other church, which was a Salvation Army one in Miramar (aka "Wellywood") for a couple of years in the mid-1990s. My main motivation for joining that church was that it had a lot of young people, and I was in my early 20s at the time, so wanted to socialise with other Christian young people. I wasn't that worried about the things you
should worry about as a Christian, such as sound doctrine or the fruits of the Spirit. Developing a social life was all that mattered to me then. I ended up drifting away from that church because I got discouraged by how worldly it was. Quite ironic actually, as I was very worldly myself! But somehow I understood that Christians shouldn't be as worldly as what the people in that church were. (To cite one example: we watched
The Addams Family Movie during one of the youth group get-togethers.)
Until the year 2000, my brand of Christianity was what I now understand to be New Evangelicalism. It was a very worldly, "feel-good" kind of Christianity. In 1981, for my ninth birthday, my mother gave me my first Bible. It was a Good News Bible, endorsed by Billy Graham of course. I now know that of all the modern translations, or new-age versions as Christopher calls them, this is one of the worst. The chief translator of the Good News Bible, aka Today's English version, Robert Bratcher, denied the divinity of Christ. The Good News Bible does something that most of the other new-age versions don't: it removes the blood of Christ almost entirely. The word "blood" is usually replaced by the word "death" in the GNB. So it is a particularly satanic version, really. But this was the Bible of my childhood, teen years and 20s.
Then in 1982, Radio Rhema opened full-time in Wellington. (It had begun in Christchurch four years earlier.) I actually attended the official opening ceremony. Rhema had a very significant effect in my life. It exposed me to all kinds of false teaching, including the Pentecostal heresies of Derek Prince and the "Christian" psychology of Dr James Dobson. It also introduced me to CCM. Thanks to Radio Rhema, I became intimately acquainted with many of CCM's big names, including Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Carman, First Call, the Second Chapter of Acts and others besides. (
Which Way the Wind Blows was one of my all-time favourite CCM songs, or songs of any genre, and even now, I catch myself humming the odd bar of it.) A Scripture Union Bookshop (which later became Manna Books, now defunct) was the source for a number of tapes and later CDs. I discovered DC Talk through a tape I bought at this bookshop (this was their early stuff when they did hip-hop, so they weren't yet featured on Rhema). I also ordered things directly from Radio Rhema sometimes. Rhema also introduced me to some books, including
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan and the Sugar Creek Gang series by Paul Hutchens (he was a Quaker and believed in revivals, so not very spiritually sound).
Between 1982 and 1984, we went to live in the United States for two years. My dad was seconded to the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. He worked in a section representing the Australia and Pacific region, or something, serving as an Alternate Executive Director. So that's why we went there. In many ways, it was an exciting time. I got to experience a decent amount of air travel, life in another country, discovery of another culture and so on. I visited most of the famous places in Washington (never did a tour of the White House, though). Also visited a number of Civil War sites, including Manassas and Gettysburg. Other things I remember from my time in the States include snow, squirrels and raccoons, squillions of TV channels (we only had two in NZ in those years), a charming show called
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, American football and baseball, and the daily Pledge of Allegiance ritual at my elementary school (which I did not participate in, since I wasn't an American citizen; still stood respectfully though and learned it by heart through hearing everyone else recite it). One thing America had that New Zealand didn't (at that time) was a Christian television channel! However, this channel was not all that godly, really. It had secular TV programmes like
Mister Ed. The Christian programmes it featured were things like
The 700 Club and
PTL with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. There were also some children's programmes. I remember one called
Gospel Bill. It was a puppet thing, mostly. Nowadays NZ does have a Christian channel, called Shine TV (run by the same company that owns Radio Rhema), which is pretty ghastly in view of how much worldliness and corrupt doctrine there is on it. There was a radio station in America we used to listen to called WCTN, which was based in Cabin John, Maryland. (We lived in Bethesda, just northwest of DC.) A show I remember from that was
Haven of Rest, and there was also a talkback hosted by Pastor Richard Kline of the Halpine Baptist Church. I think my mother rang him and got on air a couple of times, but we never went to that church.
During my time in America, my parents and I also visited Canada, France and the UK, including the Shetland Islands, where we met many of my mother's relatives. But in late 1984, we returned to New Zealand and moved from our old house in Linden to one in Miramar, near Wellington Airport. My parents and I still live in that same house to this day. In the second half of the 1980s, I attended a private boys' Presbyterian school near my home. It was technically a Christian school, but it was no more Christian in reality than my upbringing. However, through the various assemblies at that school, I did learn a number of classic hymns. Did reasonably well academically and won some prizes, although I lost a friendship during my last year at school due to the fact that we both coveted the history prize and both got very prideful in our pursuit of it. In the end, I won that particular prize, but it was a bit of a hollow victory, really (and now I feel great disgust at my pridefulness back then). In subsequent years, that former friend came out as gay and is now "married" to another man. However, there was nothing improper about the friendship we had, and as far as I know, he didn't fancy me. But perhaps it's just as well that the friendship foundered. All the same, the way it happened is a shame.
Through the first half of the 1990s, I attended Victoria University (with the way my mother was, enrolling at any other university and thereby - gasp! - living away from home was not an option). Having gone to a boys' secondary school and otherwise led an extremely sheltered existence, I now found myself suddenly surrounded by specimens of this mysterious creature called the Young Woman. I developed crushes, most of which were unrequited (not least because, every time I formed a crush, I tended to behave like a complete doofus). I do recall one young lady getting a crush on me, and while that was nice in a way, there was something about her that made me uneasy, so I rebuffed her. In my second year, a strong enough mutual interest developed with a girl in my Linguistics class that we actually had a couple of "dates" - to wit, lunch together one time, and afternoon tea another time. But she was a Seventh-Day Adventist, and her father was about as domineering towards her as my mother was to me. In the end, her father pretty much broke us up. (Funnily enough, he featured on the
Fair Go programme a couple of times a few years later.) But I think God had a hand in that, because to have got more deeply involved with her and maybe become a Seventh-Day Adventist would have been a major disaster. Also at Vic, I attended Christian Union meetings and went to some CU social events - all very spiritually shallow, quite honestly. During my Honours year (I majored in French), I became somewhat friendly with a fellow-student who was about eight or nine years my senior. We also had a couple of "dates", including watching a French movie together, and she often rang me up at nights (ostensibly so we could practise our French). But in the end, we were never really more than friends. Then she actually left for France one day, and I never saw her again. She wasn't a Christian though, so again, God was watching over all of that. As I said earlier, I learned to drive at this time. However, even after getting my full licence, I almost never drove on my own. One or both of my parents would usually be with me.
After completing my Honours degree, I studied German and Spanish for a couple of years. During this period, I began to explore a career I was interested in: translation. In 1997, I began a Master's degree in French. I didn't really want to do this (which is why I had put it off), but my mother wanted it. At the same time, I began to start getting translation work on a regular basis with a company in town. Working with this company meant regular access to the Internet for the first time (we didn't yet have it at home - my mother wasn't keen). It also meant that I discovered online pornography. I got quite a lot of work from this company for a while, and spent so much time with them that I eventually gave up on the Master's degree (the final straw was a blazing row with my mother - I am ashamed to say that I quit the MA in part to get back at her, but I had completely lost interest in it by then anyway). However, my little porn habit then got found out. I thought I was done for, but apart from a stern reprimand, I actually continued getting jobs at that company for a while longer. (I am pretty sure that one or two other people in that company, maybe even quite senior people, might have had secret porn habits of their own. Not that it justifies my sin in that area.) Eventually however, I got kind of "frozen out". This led to me starting a freelance translation business at home. Which meant I could finally get the Internet - and resume indulging in porn. I mostly tended to favour stories and pictures. Wasn't so much into videos, although I did watch some. While a lot of the porn involved the fetish I talked about above, I also had other areas of interest. Suffice it to say, my mind was quite the cesspit of filth. And like the foolish young man in Proverbs 7, who went to the street where the adulterous woman lived, I sought this stuff out. I wasn't a victim the way that say, a child accidentally discovering a stash of adult magazines might be. I was expressly after material that catered to what was already going on in my imagination. So the evil was present in my heart, and I was looking to feed it.
It took a while for my new freelance career to get off the ground, so during this time, I tried some other part-time work. That included a six-month stint in an antiques shop. Unfortunately, the owner of that shop was a male version of my mother, and the quintessential workplace bully. In early 2000, that job came to an acrimonious end. I was very bitter about it for a long time. It's not that I thought I had long-term prospects in that shop, or that type of work generally. It was that he was so nasty, and completely unrepentant about it, and also the similarity of his behaviour to my mother's was decidedly triggering. However, I sinned too, for instance by giving him a piece of my mind by e-mail, and I have discovered that a key to healing from situations like this is to confess your own sins to God. Then trust Him that He will deal with the other party in His time and in His way. It was quite a long time before I did that, however. In the meantime, I bore quite the grudge. I have not outright hated too many people in my life, but I really hated that guy. But a major reason for the hate was that I concentrated on his sins and overlooked my own. That was based on pride in my heart as well. There was something of an "I'm better than him, he's beneath my contempt for what he did" mentality. However, what I missed was that BOTH of us sinned against God. In our different ways, we were equally guilty before Him. So in the eyes of God, I wasn't better than that bullying boss at all. Finally realising that made a world of difference.
Not long after the antiques shop job ended, I found myself in another situation where the wife of an online friend developed a "more than casual" interest in me. It got to the point where she made a pass at me (from memory, I think she propositioned me for phone sex). Now despite the fact that I was lonely, down in the dumps and had a woman throwing herself at me for the first time, a dominant type of woman at that, and despite the fact that I was wickedly indulging in pornography (adultery in the heart), I still had enough respect for the Seventh Commandment to decline her. Also, there is another rule that we have in New Zealand: "Don't cut your mate's lunch". In other words, don't have an affair with your friend's wife. Not to mention that she just plain creeped me out. However, this woman was like Potiphar's wife. She wouldn't take No for an answer. She kept bugging me. I remember reading the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife at that time (albeit in the Good News Bible). The similarities to my situation were amazing. I also read other relevant passages in Proverbs. One verse that particularly stuck out to me was Proverbs 5:8. In the Good News Bible, it went something like, "Keep away from such a woman! Don't even go near her door!" Of course, in the King James Version, the verse states,
Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house. It was the "Keep away/Remove thy way" part that really stood out. I felt that God was indicating to me to cut ties with her. However, I didn't want to hurt her feelings, or the feelings of my friend. But then her grandmother died, and she went away for a few days to attend the funeral. During that time, I confided in another friend, who urged me to break contact. This friend also told me that there would never be a good time to do it (when I expressed hesitation at ending the friendship during a time of bereavement). So with some "help" from my mother, I wrote a letter and ended the friendship with both the woman and her husband. But remember, she was of the same spirit as Potiphar's wife. So she harassed me by e-mail for a couple of months. What she did amounted to stalking. It was a very stressful time. However, she gave up when I tricked her into thinking I was leaving the country for a while. (I should have trusted God to deal with the situation His way, but in my pride, I decided to solve it myself. It worked, remarkably enough, but that doesn't make my deception right.)
Towards the end of 2000, I underwent what I call my Great Theology Shift. This doesn't mean that I got saved (because I am about as sure as I can be that I was a false convert then), just that I broke away from the New Evangelical philosophy that up until then was the only "Christianity" I had ever known. It happened on this wise: one night, while reading the "Letters to the Editor" section in
The Evening Post (which used to be Wellington's evening newspaper), I came across a letter by a man named Russ Watt, mocking Christians who were opposed to this popular new series of books about a boy wizard named Harry Potter (you might have heard of him). He said they were "pathetic", which triggered me as I had been called that by my bullying boss. He found it ridiculous that Christians should be getting so wound up over works of fiction. But he also made reference to the Crusades as "evidence" of Christian hypocrisy. So I fired off a letter to the editor by e-mail, and it was published (in slightly abridged form) in
The Evening Post of 3 November 2000. (My memory is not THAT good - I recorded all this in my diary at the time.) I asked Mr Watt whether everyone who had the courage to stand for their convictions was "pathetic". I then went on to say that while the Harry Potter books were fictional, the witchcraft they promoted was real and very dangerous. I made reference to Deuteronomy 18:9-13. Finally, I said that the Crusades were carried out by the Roman Catholic Church, and that the Catholic Church was not Christian. I then added, "and many Protestant Christians will tell you that it is Christ, and not the Pope, who is the true head of the Christian Church". Moreover, I pointed out that the worship of Mary violated the First and Second Commandments. Although I made some good points, my letter evinced quite a haughty spirit. You may wonder how I came to have such a strong anti-Catholic position - unusual for a New Evangelical. Well for all my worldliness and evil ways, I did study that Good News Bible of mine a bit. And as vile a translation as it is, it still contained some truth. Enough truth, in fact, to make me see some things wrong with Catholic doctrine. Also, one night in the early 1990s, a Radio Rhema talkback featured a Catholic priest as a guest. When I compared the things he said with what my GNB said, I knew there was something seriously wrong. For instance, I remember him declaring that Mary was still alive. And he said other stuff about Mary that I just knew to be un-Biblical. The more I learned about Catholicism, the more I knew that it was very bad news.
Well of course, a Catholic responded to my letter. I'm sure others did as well, but a letter by one Kevin Boyd appeared in the 15 November 2000 edition of
The Evening Post. Here is how I reported the letter in my 2000 diary the following day:
Well, a guy called Kevin Boyd said I “obviously didn’t know much” about Catholicism. He alleged there was no such doctrine as Marian worship (he’d better read the 1994 Catechism!) and claimed Catholics only worship God (the Pope worships Mary, so there goes that idea). He also said Christ is the Head of the Church, but that the Pope is His representative on Earth (and where in the Bible does it say that?). Mr Boyd did agree with me that witchcraft is real, dangerous and is to be avoided at all costs. But he concluded by saying he looked forward to the day when all Christians would worship in unity, without “fostering prejudice”. That’s ecumenism – all denominations uniting under the Pope.
Earlier in the same entry, I made this remark:
I am quite convinced that [...] Catholicism promotes a false and un-Biblical religion which masquerades as “Christian”.
After reading Mr Boyd's letter, I paid a visit to Chick Publications, which I had discovered about a week earlier while researching Catholicism. My first diary entry about this site shows that I was quite enamoured with it:
Spent much of the afternoon and evening at Chick.com, a Web site I first discovered about a week or so ago. It’s the Web site of Chick Publications, run by one Jack T. Chick. This is a really awesome evangelical Christian organisation. Chick uses tracts in comic book form to present the Good News of Jesus Christ to people. Every single tract explains how you can be saved. And apparently, many people have been won to Jesus through Chick tracts.
But Chick tracts also expose the dangers of the occult and false religions such as Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Roman Catholicism. Yes, I said Roman Catholicism. I have always felt the teachings of Catholicism to be contrary to the Bible. There is much info on Chick’s site confirming this. Indeed, he claims that the Roman Catholic Church is nothing less than the “whore of Babylon” spoken of in Revelation 17. But Chick does not preach hatred of Catholics, only the falsehoods of the R.C. Church. He says we must not “throw rocks” at Catholics, but do all we can to win them to Christ. But that includes exposing the false doctrines of Catholicism.
Didn’t end up having a very productive day, but no matter. I learnt some mighty stuff!
In more recent times, I have learned that Jack Chick was inspired to start his ministry by the preaching of Charles Finney. He believed Finney was a man mightily used of God. That is the very root of Chick Publications. I actually corresponded about this with Chris four months ago. The fact remains however that Chick Publications played a key role in my Great Theology Shift. However, on 17 November 2000, I found another site (which I think is still around) that first alerted me to the Bible version issue:
Tonight, I found another excellent Christian site, “Christian News and Views”. Many very interesting articles here. One challenged the authenticity of modern Bible translations, saying they corrupt the true Word of God. It claimed the Good News Bible – the version I use – is one of the worst! A sobering thought.
Other articles on this site warn of how the likes of Billy Graham and Dr James Dobson have fallen away from the truth of the Gospel and into error. Again, sobering stuff.
Despite that warning about Dr Dobson, my diary shows that I soon went on to read his book,
Love Must Be Tough. But December 2000 continued to bring forth some pretty interesting developments. For one thing, my stalker wrote me a "one-off" e-mail on the 12th. (It turned out to actually be the last thing she wrote to me.) My initial reaction to that message included quotes from the King James Bible rather than the Good News Bible.
On the face of it, the e-mail seemed pretty innocuous, a “catch-up” message from “an old friend”. But I can read the subtext, the message which is not verbalised, but which the history of my past experience with [the stalker] writes in glaring neon lights. The subtext of the e-mail goes something like this: “I’m still here. I haven’t forgotten about you. You might think you’ve escaped me, but I will recapture you and have my way with you yet!” OH, NO YOU WON’T! I will NEVER surrender! “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.” Psalm 18:2-3 (KJV) I will no longer trust in my own strength or wisdom, but will trust in the Lord to deliver me from [the stalker]. She’s got no chance against the Sword of the Spirit!
Then came this on the 14th:
Visited Demonbuster.com and read a few articles on there. One which really caught my attention was one about the spirit of Jezebel. Some of the characteristics of this spirit include control, domination, manipulation, sexual impurity, intimidation and much more besides. It was almost like a profile of [the stalker]. “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12 (KJV) My battle is not really with [the stalker], but against Satan and his kingdom, including the spirit of Jezebel which I believe may be present in [the stalker].
But to overcome the spirit of Jezebel, I have some sins of my own that I need to repent of. In particular, lying and cowardice. In lying to [the stalker] (or anyone, for that matter), I am trying to control the situation, and trusting in my own wisdom and abilities, rather than putting my faith in God, the Spirit of Truth. Also, by lying, I am giving into fear. But “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind”. 2 Timothy 1:7 (KJV) “And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matthew 10:28 (KJV) Lies and fear are not of God, therefore I must repent of these and ask God’s forgiveness, so that He will cleanse me and I can serve Him.
I'm not sure whether Demonbuster.com still exists, but nowadays I would NOT recommend that site. It is full of Pentecostal weirdness. But what I find interesting there is the conviction I was clearly feeling. I don't reckon I was saved, but God was clearly doing something in my heart. I then found a site called Dial-the-Truth Ministries, run by Terry Watkins. That site still exists, although it's not updated much nowadays. On 18 December 2000, I got my Good News Bible and started comparing it to the King James Version. Here is what I discovered:
Did some Bible study, but this was a bit different to the usual. Last night I’d printed out an exposé of the New King James Bible and its many “retranslations” (or mistranslations) of what is in the King James Bible, or Authorised Version. Investigated verses in my Good News Bible (the so-called “Today’s English Version”), and found that almost all of them contained considerable alterations of what is in the Authorised Version. Some verses were so altered that they had an entirely different meaning! I’ll be doing more research tomorrow, but so far it’s been pretty grim.
Then the NEXT day, I shared some discoveries about CCM:
[W]ent to the Dial-the-Truth Ministries Web site (www.av1611.org) and continued reading an exposé by Terry Watkins (the same guy who wrote about the New King James Bible) on rock music. He shows pretty conclusively that rock music, including so-called “Christian rock”, is of the Devil. The Bible says true Christian music should glorify God and be sung to Him. “Christian rock” stars say they use rock as a way to “reach the lost”, but 1 Corinthians 1:21 shows that it is preaching, not music, which God intends for reaching the unsaved. What’s more, music should emphasise melody, but rock emphasises rhythm, the beat. The beat of rock and roll is based largely on the drumbeats of voodoo and other dark pagan religions. Rock stars like Little Richard admit as much!
What was really sobering is just how un-Christian much of the work of so-called Christian artists like DC Talk, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith and others is. The evidence is pretty clear, and I must admit, the likes of Grant and DC Talk seem to get progressively less Christian with each album they put out. But maybe that’s because their music, with its rock beats, has had a Satanic influence from the outset! I must say, I really felt (and continue to feel) challenged by the Lord about the type of music I listen to.
My entry for 20 December 2000 demonstrates some real conviction:
Went to the Dial-the-Truth Ministries Web site and read lots of interesting articles, mainly about the King James Bible vs. “modern” Bible translations and more about the evils of rock music, including its dark origins. A couple of articles proved pretty conclusively that “Christian” rock is like “Christian” pornography or “Christian” dope-smoking. In other words, it’s an oxymoron. Light and darkness cannot have fellowship.
My own liking of pop music (which is really “soft rock”) derives from the fact that it makes me “feel good”. In other words, it appeals to my flesh, to my carnal instincts. “Christian” pop or rock does exactly the same thing, but I’ve tended to think it was “OK” to listen to Amy Grant, DC Talk or whoever because they were “Christian”. But if I’m really honest, I listen to these singers or bands for the same reason I have listened to secular singers or bands – because the music makes me “feel good”. It doesn’t glorify God or testify to the work of Jesus Christ, unlike those “old-fashioned”, “boring” hymns. “Christian” rock does exactly the same thing secular rock does – glorifies man and awakens carnal instincts! As Winnie-the-Pooh might say, I have been Foolish and Deluded.
But wait, there's more from that entry, although this time it concerns the Rapture:
Read more on the DTTM site, about rock music, creation vs. evolution and the end times. The DTTM people believe, like many Christian people, ministries and churches today, in the Rapture, where Christ will allegedly spirit His church away before the Tribulation. But on sites like Demonbuster.com and Open Bible Ministries (www.1335.com) to name but two, I have read that the “Rapture” theory was dreamed up by a Jesuit priest named Francesco Ribera, and didn’t start being seriously adopted by the Christian Church until the mid-19th Century! While there will certainly be a Second Coming of Christ, it will be with a great shout, not “sneaking” the Christians away from the Tribulation! The persecutions of the last days will be experienced by true Christians and be a supreme test of faith.
I have to say that I have never really believed in a pre-Tribulation Rapture. How can the Antichrist makes war with the saints if they've all been secretly raptured away beforehand? But as you can see there, I was kind of confused about it.
On the 22nd, I had more to say about the Bible version issue:
Managed to conclude the study of the New King James Bible in light of my Good News Bible. The findings continued to be pretty grim, though there were a couple of passages in which the GNB version wasn’t as bad as the NKJV one! Still, the evidence is mounting that the Good News Bible is, well, bad news. Like the other modern translations, it is not based solely on the Textus Receptus of Antioch, but on corrupted Alexandrine manuscripts favoured by the Catholic Church, most notably the Vaticanus and Sinaiaticus. Moreover, I have learnt that its chief translator, Robert Bratcher, didn’t even believe in the deity of Christ! Small wonder that His deity is attacked in a number of passages in the Good News Bible. One of the worst examples is Philippians 2:6, which in the GNB reads: “He did not think that by force he should try to become equal with God”. It’s there in black and white. Jesus Christ did not have to “try to become equal with God”! He WAS and IS equal with God! He IS God! Christ is God manifest in the flesh! The King James rightly says: “He thought it not robbery to be equal with God”. The KJV is the only Bible in the English language based solely on the Textus Receptus.
The 24th was Christmas Eve, and I talked about Christmas a bit, and also a new site I found called Jesus-is-Lord.com. Unfortunately, that site had heresy on it the last time I looked (in particular, embracing a Saturday Sabbath and rejecting eternal security). But back in 2000, it had some quite good material on it, although the tone was always a bit questionable. But anyway, my thoughts about Christmas:
It is becoming increasingly obvious to me, though I think I have already sensed it, that Christmas is not Christian at all, but is as pagan and godless as Halloween. As the article on Jesus-is-Lord.com correctly stated, you can paint an apple to make it look like an orange, but no matter how much like an orange it may look, it’s still an apple. Christmas (or more correctly, the “Christ Mass”) is a pagan apple painted as a Christian orange. The rituals of the Roman Saturnalia were adopted by the apostate and pagan Roman Catholic Church and given Christian names. 25 December was the birthday of the Roman sun-god, so the Catholic Church declared it the birthday of their “Son-God”. But the Jesus of Christmas is not the Jesus of the Holy Bible, as both the Bible and history show.
Then I had this to say on Christmas Day itself:
So this is Christmas … a celebration, supposedly, of the birth of Jesus. But while I have no doubt of Jesus’ virgin birth (is you don’t believe in that, it’s a bit difficult to believe in His death on the cross and resurrection), I do now question the legitimacy of the “Christ Mass” as a celebration of His birth. The Bible never instructs us to celebrate Jesus’ birth. And if it did, you can be sure God would want it celebrated in an entirely different manner to the kind of pagan revelry, debauchery and idolatry that characterises the Christmas we have today. Historically, 25 December is the birthday of the Babylonian sun-god, Tammuz, son of Semiramis. Modern-day depictions of Mary and “baby Jesus” bear an uncanny resemblance to ancient pagan depictions of Semiramis and Tammuz. Like I said yesterday, the Roman Catholic Church, “Mother of Harlots”, has simply adopted the pagan rituals of Rome, which came from the pagan rituals of Babylon, and given them Christian names. What we are really celebrating, unbeknownst to most, is the birth of Tammuz, a Babylonian god. Jesus is not in Christmas. He never has been, and He never will be. But He is in my heart, and the blood He shed on the cross for my sins cleanses me from sin. Hallelujah!
I also got a bit fired up after watching the Queen's Christmas message (I currently still watch it, actually):
The [Queen's message] was a clever little ad for the One World Church, as Her Majesty dared imply the Bible, the Koran and Buddhist, Hindu and Sikh sacred writings all had a “divine source”. What blasphemy to lump the Word of God with such Satanic trash! Shame on you, Ma’am!
On the 28th, I discovered another site that is still around today, Personal Freedom Outreach. This site has some good information about cults, although you have to pay to get full access to their "Quarterly Journal". Anyway, I reported on some stuff I read there:
In my exploration of Christian Web sites, I came across another today called Personal Freedom Outreach. This site has the aim of exposing the false teachings of cults and wrong teaching within the Christian church. Some of the articles, such as about Benny Hinn, I have read elsewhere. (Or at least, I’ve read very similar ones on the topic.) There were also articles exposing false teachings by Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland and other Charismatics. Another article on this site warned of the dangers of conspiracy theories, e.g. about the Illuminati and the New World Order etc. The basic point is that many of these theories are distracting Christians from their real purpose of sharing the gospel about Jesus Christ. I must say that many of the sites I’ve visited which harp on about the Illuminati and the coming One World Government say little if anything about how you can get saved. And that should be the main purpose for a Christian ministry: preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and His atoning sacrifice on the Cross.
That same night, I threw out two books I had bought a few years earlier, and then explained it the next day:
A little more on why I decided to throw those books out last night. It really is most unusual of me to throw anything of mine out, especially books! Moreover, it had been quite a while since I bought the books and read them. The author, a Charismatic, had had these out-of-body experiences in 1976, during which Jesus allegedly appeared to her and took her on a sort of divine “guided tour” of first Hell, then Heaven, over 40 days and nights. I got the books out of curiosity as to what these places were like. But the Bible gives ample description of these two places, and if God hasn’t revealed something about them there, He has His reasons. What bugged me about the books is that out-of-body experiences are more in tune with New Age practice than Christian. Also, after the author supposedly went to Hell, she was in a terrible emotional state and had nightmares for days afterwards. Would Jesus really do that to one of His children? But more seriously, Jesus said rather a lot to her during these “trips” into eternity. Should we as Christians take Baxter’s books as something additional to the Bible, seeing as they supposedly have “new words” of Jesus? The Bible says if anyone tries to add to it or take away from it, they’ll be under a curse. Would Jesus go against His own word by giving “new revelations” to a housewife in Washington, D.C.? I really don’t think so. Reviews of Baxter’s books, which I read on the Personal Freedom Outreach and Let Us Reason Ministries Web sites, lined up her “revelations” against the Scriptures and proved pretty conclusively that they’re a load of bunkum, despite Baxter’s probably sincere desire to try and win people for Christ. And so I threw Baxter’s two books out last night and asked the Lord to forgive me for ever buying them in the first place.
The "Baxter" in question was Mary K. Baxter, and the books by her that I threw out were
A Divine Revelation of Hell and its sequel,
A Divine Revelation of Heaven. Definitely books that you should steer well clear of. Anyway, as you can see, my personal theology was undergoing a rather radical shift, although I was still under New Evangelical and Pentecostal influence somewhat. But there is some pretty good understanding being expressed there, and some conviction over certain sins. I didn't just swallow what I was reading blindly, either. For instance, I did my research on comparing the Good News Bible with the KJV, and realised that there was a considerable disparity between the two. As a translator myself, I understood something about semantics, and it was as clear as day that the GNB and KJV were saying some VERY different things in many places! However, there were still some things wrong with my doctrine, like when I wrote on 31 December 2000 that I had "recommitted my life to Jesus Christ after a period of backsliding". Hmm, no mention of repentance. And while I did use the word "repent" back then, I don't think I understood it correctly. And all this good understanding aside, there was still plenty of pride in my heart.
OK, I'm going to split my post here and then post the second part as a reply to it. Thank you for reading this far if you've managed to hang in there!
