My Journey through the worm Hole of Religion

My little story starts from toodlerhood, I was bought up with a Catholic Father & a Penticostal Mother. My Mothers Mother was a Sydney Christian Life Center (The new Hillsong Sydney) member - where I went to visit some times.

My story is simple, I "Said my little Prayer" at 12 years of Age, was Baptised at 14 (And spoke in tongues *not anymore*) and then left my mothers house at the age of 16. The reason I call it my mothers house is because I never felt at home because my heart was always very strongly with my father.

At 16 I went to Hillsong Church Waterloo and experienced the so call "Toronto Blessings Revival" which swept the world. I watched people falling over everywhere, I watched as people lost control of their bodies - unable to stop lauging or crying or wriggling on the floor. I watched and felt very defective - because as much as they prayed for me, I wouldnt fall over like the rest - until this one guy prayed for me - I blacked out for a second and found myself on the floor. I laughed, cried and got up. It lasted until very late. To be honest, since then I have studied different religions and could only compare it to Sharmanism in manner - I dont beleive it was God the Creator - but just evil spirits if anything.

I left that place feeling very much the same as when I got there. I didnt go back to church from then until I was 21 years of age. In that time I got into Wicca, Astro Travel, reading weird books which I wont make popular by naming them & generally following the worldly idiology of Tony Robbins. In that time I sowed my royal oats and did everything I was taught not to.

At 21 years of age I had a breif encounter with a guy who I wont name, he went to Gymea Anglican Church in Gymea. He was in Gymea Bay Baths and I made fun of him for reading the bible and told him to just live his life and enjoy it! He then did something that enraged me, he told me right out and open that if I was to die and be judged by God at that moment I would burn for an eternity. That I needed to repent and put my faith in Jesus, I needed to give Jesus control over my life. I nearly stabbed the guy. I was so very angry. But, 6 months later I was lying in a drug induced haze and had a vision of him telling me that. I knew at that point I had played life right out to the end. It was time to make changes before I went too far down a road that leads to destruction.

I went the next week back to Hillsong Church in Waterloo, I kept going there for around 18 months - but then I realised that what the bible was teaching wasnt quite their bag... They kept using scriptures and applying them to themselves when it came to "Having a better life", scriptures that were contextually written for something totally different. That doesn't mean I hate them, I just see things differently and dont agree on all fronts.

I then met this lovely girl from a local smaller church Church in the sutherland shire - which grew, they were very old school, lots of older people there, simple music - less entertainment and more about God.

I stayed there around 3.5 years after that, by the end I was the cleaner, the IT guy for the church, an intern for bible college to become a youth Minister and I felt a strong bond with most of the people on the Leadership team there.

I was never TOTALLY on board with everything preached, in fact there were some people there who made me get quite irrate, one being a guy called Dr. Nick - who one day gave me quite a hard talking to regarding the fact that I "wasnt saved and should not be in ministry". I was so angry with him over that - I went to the other leaders of the church and really didnt find anyone who had a back bone enough to stand up to him regarding what he had said. I could not understand WHY ho would say it...

One day in Bible college we had a travelling preacher come through and teach on Evangelism, his name was Julian Batchelor. Julian taught us the Following:

• We are all sinners - no one person is "Good" because we have all broken Gods Law
• We cant 'fix' ourselves
• We are destined to eternity in Hell - which NEVER ends.
• We need to Repent (turn fro mour sin and have a change of heart toward God)
• We need to trust that the death and resurection of Jesus Christ is sufficient for our salvation
• We need to Trust in Jesus and keep repenting
• By his sacrifice we will go to heaven - not because of ANYTHING we have done - it is HIS free gift.

When they tested us on how many of us thought we were good people they asked a Series of questions, click here to take the same test we did.

After that test we all felt pretty rotten, but there WAS hope - and the Hope is in Jesus.

Well, After hearing that guy teach on the Gospel, Evangelism & what the message really is, I knew he had something - I also knew I had to repent.

So, I asked him to go to our church the next night - youth group, I forcefully asked our youth minister to let him preach - explaining how GOOD this guy was...

Julian came to our Church, he preached the Gospel. Whilst all of this was happening, a young girl I knew (who hung around a group of 'Goths' who she went to school with), bought a few people that night and they all heard the message, two of them responded to the message and one of them was her. That started the journey for Kristina, and mine had started the night before.

In the time after that I was seriously praying a lot about why I had not repented in the past, why I had not stopped smoking (Which I automatically KNEW was a sin as soon as I started walking and living in repentance), why people around me - except Nick - had told me I was a christian and all was well - I just had to keep pushing forward in Gods will etc.

I then started praying that God would open my eyes so that I would not be deceived again anymore. God DID open my eyes - rapidly. I started seeing all of the light shows, musically induced emotion and hype and how it was manipulating people to go "Down the front" to "get Saved". I noticed that people were being lead by this raw emotional hype to beleive they were christians, and that often they either hung around after that or they slipped out the back door so-to-speak and slipped right back into the world...

This made me very unhappy, I took this issue along with other issues to the main Church Leader in the place and was basically told it was all a matter of opinion, that everyone has a different way of 'Evangelising'.

In the mean time myself and Kristina had fallen in love and got Married with a child on the way due to our pre-repentant lifestyle together.

So I took my leave of this church with my family after the conversations on my beleifs regarding Smoking, Accupuncture & not preaching the gospel yet still doing 'alter calls'. I suffered for a while on this and tried to get through - but never did. There were conversations and emails. I got no where. I left. In saying this, I still have a love for many of the people in this church, I feel the loss of not being able to be with them.

We were then out of churches for around 1.5 years.

In that time we visited many churches and found that a LOT of Emergent Church preaching was happening. Similar stuff all the way.

We then went to one church for about 6 - 12 months and left to go to Caringbah Pressie Church, which preaches straight from teh Bible. It is the safest place I have found.

If you are interested in the Emergent Church click here, they use unspiritual things to get people 'to church' but then cant feed them the real gospel for fear of offending them and loosing them - and their money.