Our Testimony
“The Lighthouse” represents a vessel to give hope to the lost and warn the ships (the church and believers) where the rocks are.
As new Christians we can be so easily be swept along with whatever church fads are going on at the time and are led to believe as in our case that we must not judge and that love must be our motivation regardless of wrong teaching. So we just go along with the program.This summed up our early Christian walk. I can not remember the exact detail but will try and give you most of it .We know now, that it w as only by God's grace and the action of a dear Christian putting the love of the truth into action above friendship that allows us to be where we are today.
Between 1991/92 Hilary (my wife) and I put our faith in The Lord Jesus and were baptised. Not long after there where certain movements going on that caught our attention; The Toronto blessing, the Alpha course and w hat was called revival.We were involved in a Pioneer church (hyper Charismatic) run by Gerald Coates (Gnostic and false prophet)We wanted a Sunday experience and this was the place to be. Don't get me wrong everyone and everything seemed fine until the Lord started His work to get us out of there.We do believe in the Gifts of the Holy spirit today, and we can't deny those precious moments that one has when worshipping the Lord. But if one doesn't know where the line is drawn one can soon become what is known asPneumo-centric (spirit-centred) instead of Christo-centric-(Christ centred) In other words the focus is on spiritual experience and what one can get, seeking the gifts above the giver of the gifts. The word tells us to worship in spirit and truth. The Holy spirit is never out to be exalted, Jesus said in John 15:26 "But when the Helper comes, who m I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.
In about 1993 we went to "New wine" run by Rev David Pytches, (Soul survivor is the youth version).
This event was like nothing we had ever experienced.
The"Toronto Blessing" or I should say the Toronto deception was in full swing and there w e where jumping around w it h all the rest of them. There were men roaring like lions, women hysterically writhing on the floor and without exceptioneveryone laughing uncontrollably. “Wow,” we thought this was great. I personally experienced a vision were I had all theseinstruments to play before the Lord and He was dancing before me. To an eager musician this was great.How foolish and naive I was. As our church was (what we found out later) pneumo-centric our experiences where nothing out of the norm and slotted in well with the Alpha course which w e then attended. Before long we got into "March for Jesus", PACT (Petersfield and Area churches Together) an ecumenical gathering. We were taught that towns would beevangelise by going up on top of the nearest high point and claiming it for God, this was known as spiritual mapping. We had no idea at the time that none of this was biblical. We never thought to ask did Jesus or the disciples teach or do these things? One day we were given a book "The Final Quest" by Rick Joyner (a so called prophet) which was the book you had to get if your were into all this hype. Because the book was lent to us we thought we should get our own copy. So we went to a Christian bookshop/ lending library at the end of our road. We had got to know the owners Roger Hill and His wife, Di. Di said to us that she would only get us a copy of the book if we promised to listen to some tapes she had, pointing out the error of such books. We agreed. The tapes were by Tricia Tillin, Bill Randles and Jacob Prasch, and they turned us upside down.
You may have heard the analogy of bank tiller who handles true currency all the time and therefore knows when they get given a counterfeit. “Like a Christian who always handles the truth of the word”. Will know when they are given a false word (wrong teaching). This sounds great, but if like us at this time you had only handled counterfeit, it would be difficult when the true notes are handed to you. So for us to listen to these tapes and receive this teaching was extremely hard to take. Yet it was clearly the truth. The subjects where Ecumenism, Kingdom now, Restoration /dominion teaching. Everything we had taken in hook, line and sinker for the last five and a half years was revealed on these tapes as deception and unbiblical teaching. We had been caught.Feeling threatened, it took Hilary two weeks to even listen to the tapes and read the literature Di had also given us. I think I spent three weeks going over and over these subjects but eventually one thing was for certain, we had to repentbefore God and leave that Church. Not only was The Pioneer (pioneer people) church embracing this teaching but so was New frontiers (Terry Virgo) and many other like them.Some time after we took a stand against the ecumenism in the town which embraced the Alpha course. Believing God had la id it on our hearts to be watchmen, warning others of deceptions, and confront the perpetrators.
This lead to us being banned from all the churches in Petersfield. As much as it was a very distressing time, we loved God, His truth too much to have continued in compromise.
Out of this came the lighthouse (nothing too grand or too big)