The Darkness of this World
In 1979, Carmel my wife, our three-year-old daughter and I lived in a rented flat in Fairfield. We had been married for three years. Although we had a few dramas in our marriage, our life was overall simple and lovely. Carmel was a home mum and I worked at APM (Australian Paper Manufacturer) as a shift worker. I made good money and we had a surplus, so Carmel and I decided to invest in a business. After some searching, we settled on a takeaway shop on Johnston Street, Collingwood. A few months later, we realised that we had been scammed. The shop did not yield the returns we experienced during the trial period, the accounts were fiddled with. Before long, we were constantly in the red. Most of the money I earned at the paper mill had to be added to the shop income to keep us afloat. Slowly Carmel and I got discouraged. Carmel cried every day and hated managing the shop, she didn’t want to be there. We began to argue a lot and the situation was not good.
During this time, I became friends with one of the tenants of the flat where we lived. His name was Peter. He was single and lived alone. Peter was into New Age teaching, he read a lot about all that stuff and smoked marijuana. I was impressed by Peter, he seemed to know a lot and we became good friends. We spent a lot of times together, we were like brothers. I also began to smoke and read books that he gave me. In a way, we were both on a journey of discovery, searching for life and its meaning. I really looked up to Peter and considered him a guide in my life. This went on for many months. He gave me many books to read, books on psychology, life skills, and religions. My mind was opened up to things I had never heard before. I was excited to discover all these new things. One day Peter gave me a book on Hinduism. I was fascinated by the stuff in the book. Before long, I started to meditate and practice the ideas from the book. During my meditation alone, Carmel knew nothing about what I was doing in my spare time. During these times, I “travelled” to different plains and “met” my guides who led me deeper in my understanding of the spiritual world. Slowly I began to do astral travel. As time went by, I was compelled to meditate every day.
Over a period of six months, my life went from being simple and lovely to a place of isolation. I isolated myself from people around me, including Carmel. My life became a place of darkness, a place with no hope, no love, and no joy. Life was not worth living anymore. I could not understand why. Looking back, I can see how the situation with the business and the secret life I led, had a profound effect on me, in a negative and destructive way. My life started spiralling downward and I had no control over it. It got so bad that for the first time in my life suicidal thought began to cloud my mind. I never had such thoughts before, but now suicide became the only comforting thought I had. Somehow the suicidal thoughts provided a way of escape. For a few months, I thought about killing myself daily. One day I decided to carry it out. For a month or so I contemplated on how to do it. I could not bear the thought of jumping off a bridge or any high places, and I knew that pills don’t always work, and I was too cowardice to pull the trigger, so I contemplated gassing myself with the exhaust fumes from my car. Then something happened that changed everything.
The Light of God
On one of those days while I was thinking and building up the courage to carry out the plan, I remember getting into my car, I drove down the driveway, did a U-turn, and stopped at the traffic light on Station Street. Sitting at the red light, my mind kept thinking about gassing myself. Suddenly out of nowhere, I heard a voice, “Read the Bible.” I did not know where this voice came from, but my immediate thought was ‘not another book’. I wondered but could not figure out who could have said those words “read the Bible”. The strange thing was that those words became like an echo chamber, constantly echoing inside my mind. When Carmel came home, I told her what had happened. The very next day we both went into the city, to the big Collins book shop on Elizabeth Street. We went in and asked for a Bible, the shop lady gave us a big Bible, an old King James Version, with a blue cover. I couldn’t explain how and why, for the first time in about a year, I felt my heart come alive. We took the Bible home and began reading it. We could not put it down. Like any book, we started reading from the start. We started with learning about God in the Old Testament. Bit by bit God revealed Himself to us. At the time, we did not know any Christians, and so there was no one to guide us through the Bible teachings. I told Peter what had happened to us, but he was not interested, and slowly our friendship dwindled. But my knowledge of God increased. Carmel and I began to believe in the God of the Bible, and we started talking to Him. Amazingly, wonderful things started to happen to us that we could not explain. Within a year or so, we became absolutely convinced that God was with us.
At that stage, we still had no idea of the Christian world, the church or being born again. We didn’t know who Jesus or The Holy Spirit was, but we knew God. We were in the Old Testament. One thing we did was to tell people that God was real, many people thought we were crazy. But something had happened to us that we could not deny the existence of God. One day one of my work colleagues came up to me and pointed to another worker, and said, “See that guy over there, he’s a born again Christian like you.” I honestly did not know what he meant. Later on, I approached this young fellow, Alex. Alex became a Christian one year earlier, he shared his testimony with me, and how he came to the Lord. My ears opened up, and I understood more as he explained many things to me. One day, Alex invited me to a drama held at his church and I accepted. I did not care for the play but was interested in what people do in church. On Sunday, Carmel and I attended the meeting together, which was held in the city, at the top of Bourke Street. It was in a theatre, The Princess Theatre. I was puzzled by a church in a theatre, but the people were so nice that we decided to stay. There were lots of people, they sang beautiful songs about God, I was overwhelmed by the experience. At the end, the preacher asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus and be baptised. I got up and went down, Carmel stayed behind. I was taken to the backstage and people prayed with me. I was not the only one who went down. After the prayer, I was asked to change into a white gown and waited on stage. Suddenly the curtain opened and the crowd was there watching us. I was led to a huge tub filled with water and was baptised. When I came out of the water I saw Carmel there in a white gown and she was baptised too. I couldn’t explain the overwhelming joy, peace and love that I experienced that day. I felt like I was literally in heaven. Since then we have not stopped serving the Lord, our marriage and lives were healed, and the Lord showed us many signs and wonders. He is indeed the Truth, the Life and the Way. To God be the glory.
