Standing in a bright and ornate palace, I
appeared to have been taken up into the heavenly realms. Words cannot describe the
beauty of the building's Roman style interior. A wonderful atmosphere of peace
and holiness pervaded the court.
Before me stood a beautiful woman with a
shining, angelic glow on her face. Looking like some kind of divine priestess,
she had a floral garland on her head and wore a long white gown. Her wonderful
smile of joy was a delight to my beholding eyes.
In her hand she held a golden neck chain, from
which hung a small brown wooden cross. It looked like a chain a priest might
wear. The angelic being placed the chain around my neck, the wooden cross
proudly hanging in front of my chest.
Her beautiful blue eyes were as deep as heaven
itself. She smiled and said, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”.
I intuitively realized that I had just been initiated
into the priesthood of Christ.
Suddenly, I awoke and found myself lying in
bed. The dream was so lucid and powerful that I was convinced I had been taken
up into the heavenly realms in my soul body and had undergone initiation into
the priesthood.
I was impressed to purchase a real cross and
chain as a token of my ordination. At a local Christian bookstore, I selected a
wooden cross and chain that were identical to the ones I saw in the dream.
When I returned home, I lighted the two candles
on my altar and burned incense. Holding a private devotional, prayer, and
meditation service, I consecrated the cross and chain, solemnly placing it
around my neck.
I regarded myself as having been called by God
for training into the Christian priesthood and wanted to become a minister. It
was my deepest desire to help save people from the illusions and glamours of
materialistic living and bring them into eternal life through the consciousness
of the grace given by Jesus Christ.
The next day, I attended the Sunday morning
church service at the New Lighted Way. I was wearing my newly consecrated
wooden cross hidden beneath my vest because I didn't want to be pretentious and
have the cross visibly displayed. I regarded my selection for the priesthood as
a sacred, private affair between me and God.
At my turn during our customary candle lighting
ordinance, I walked up to the altar, lighted a white candle, and placed it next
to the Christ candle. Muriel closed her eyes to channel a personal message for
me from the Holy Spirit.
“I see you wearing a wooden cross suspended on
a gold chain”, she said. “Upon the spirit planes you have received an
initiation into the priesthood. The Father
is very pleased that you have accepted the offer of becoming a servant of Jesus Christ”.
Wow, I thought, it really did happen. My cross
and chain are completely hidden from view, so the Spirit must have revealed one
scene of my initiation to her.
Muriel continued. “You will be greatly blessed
and rewarded for your decision to become a disciple of Christ. A glorious future is awaiting. You will eventually leave
your current employment and be involved in evangelism”.
Smiling with satisfaction, I returned to my
seat.
Muriel had previously stated that she was a
member of the Melchizedek priesthood. I thus assumed I had been initiated into
this same priesthood also, although I regarded my status to be probationary
until undergoing further training.
In remembrance of the death of my savior and
master, I resolved to wear the wooden cross at all times. I wanted it to be a
constant reminder of my commitment to the sacred life of the priesthood.
Muriel began her sermon and talked about the
necessity of living a pure life by following the example of Jesus Christ, as
described in the Bible. She emphasized the requirement to obey the will of the Father as manifested through the
voice of the Holy Spirit, but warned
about the existence of satanic entities in the spirit realms that might try to
lead one astray.
“One has to be very discerning”, she advised. “If
you are not sure whether a spirit entity is from Christ or is satanic, ask the entity, 'Are you of Jesus Christ?' If
the entity is not from Christ, it
will flee from you. The name of Jesus is the most powerful name in the
universe. You can use it to protect yourselves from evil powers. For example,
if you feel you are being oppressed by an evil force, you can use the
invocation, 'In the name of Jesus Christ, I command that you leave.' The entity
will have to depart”.
After a pause, Muriel changed topics.
“Now there may be a rapture. It is inferred in
the book of Revelation. We will be part of the 144000, the redeemed first
fruits. I have not yet received full clarity on this from Jesus. But a time may come when all the saints are lifted up in the
air and we can levitate. We will probably visit other planets.
My mind was starting to get confused again. I
had thought I had the resurrection figured out; now this rapture idea had
muddled things up. I concluded that I would have to meditate earnestly upon the
matter and have faith that the Holy
Spirit would reveal the meaning of the book of Revelation to me.
A couple of months passed. The annual Kenneth
Copeland West Coast Believer's Voice of Victory Convention began at the Anaheim
Convention Center. I was inspired to attend every evening during the week-long
event. Copeland's topic for the convention concerned the covenant relationship
existing between the Father and his people.
What a difference between my attitude at this
convention and my attitude at the previous one. At the earlier convention, I
had identified myself as a metaphysical New Ager, a disciple of the venerable
Djwhal Khul. Regarding my master's esoteric knowledge to be far superior to the
biblical knowledge of the Christians, I had gone to the convention merely as a
spectator. I attended only because Muriel had praised Copeland so much and
because the inner voice of my meditation told me to go.
Since that previous convention, much had
changed. I now identified myself as a born-again Christian, even though I still
felt part of the New Age movement. However, this did not make me feel any sense
of separation from my Christian brothers at this visit as I lifted my arms in
praise and glory toward God. I enthusiastically took part in all the singing.
As we all joined hands, I prayed to the Lord Jesus, along with the 10000-person
congregation, and whole-heartedly pitched in my generous donations at the
offering time.
When Brother Copeland preached, I eagerly
listened to what he had to say, carefully following the Bible texts referred
to. Regarding myself as one of the fellow believers, at the end of each evening
I felt absolutely ecstatic after the final singing. I was filled with joy and
felt high, as if I were walking on air. Rarely had I been so filled with happiness.
I even felt this joy while at work during the
day. The songs of praise rang in my heart. For example, during one morning of
the convention week, I was sitting at my desk at work when our company's
outside salesman called me on the phone. He was a conservative elderly fellow
whom I had known for several years.
“Will, how are you doing?” he asked.
I burst out in the most vibrant, enthusiastic,
and happy voice imaginable, “I am doing absolutely fantastic!”
Our salesman was silent for a moment. Then he
said in a serious tone, “Is there anything wrong?”
I assured him that nothing was wrong; on the
contrary, everything seemed so very right.
At the end of each evening I returned to my
apartment and on my knees gave thanks to the
Father for bringing me into the full knowledge and power of Jesus Christ. The inner voice of
meditation then encouraged me to attend the convention again the following
evening.
Brother Copeland gave an altar call each
evening for unbelievers to come forward and accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. I realized that I had
already been born again, and it would not be appropriate for me to go down to
the front with the new converts.
I wished Kenneth would have a special altar
call for people who felt the calling of God to enter into the gospel ministry
and were willing to publicly acknowledge that call. In honor of my ordination
into the Christian priesthood, I wanted to respond to such a call. Underneath
my vest I proudly wore my sacred wooden cross.
Much to my delight, on Thursday evening Kenneth
announced the altar call I had longed for. He specifically asked only those
people who had made a serious and dedicated commitment to enter the ministry to
come forward.
There was no hesitation on my part. I rushed
down the flights of stairs and joined the group surrounding the platform at the
front of the arena. Oh, how much I wanted to be an evangelist like Kenneth
Copeland, if the Lord would only
anoint me with the power.
Copeland was joined at the lectern by other
members of his ministerial staff. They prayed for our blessing and asked God
that we be given the gifts of the Holy Spirit to carry out our gospel mission.
At the time, I did not anticipate how soon my ministry would begin.
Shortly after the convention, I received a
phone call from Muriel.
“The
Father has told me to move to Texas”, she said. “I am going to close
everything down here in Los Angeles and start the New Lighted Way in Fort Worth”.
Her statement shocked me. She had been
operating the Lighted Way in Los Angeles for more than twenty years.
“It appears that Texas needs to be told all
about mystical Christianity”, she explained.
Having observed Muriel's obedience and
dedication over the years, I knew she would pull up her roots and carry out the
direction, even though she appeared to be in her sixties and had lived in
southern California for most of her life. I wished her well and expressed
confidence that the Lord would take care of all her needs.
The Call to Evangelize
“Go down to the mall and preach”.
I heard the words clearly inside my mind as I
was kneeling in front of the altar in my apartment. It was a Saturday morning,
and I had just begun my meditation period.
I said to myself, “What? Go preach at the mall?”
Listening for more information, I heard nothing
further. Shrugging my shoulders, I carried on with my silent introspection.
For several weeks I had been devoting my
weekends to the study of J. Gordon Melton's Encyclopedia
of American Religions. Continuing with this reading, I spent the rest of
the day at the local city library. The history of the various Christian
denominations intrigued me. Accounts of the work of such greats as the Wesley
brothers, Finney, the Campbells, Moody, and others captivated my interest.
A week passed. I began my weekend morning
meditation as usual. “Go and preach in the mall”, the inner voice remarked.
“What do you mean, 'go and preach'?” I asked in
my thinking, as if telepathically addressing the originator of the mysterious
command.
There was no reply.
Something special about the voice this time
struck a chord of fear inside me. It was the same inner voice of conscience I
had so often heard before, but this time it was especially gentle and precise,
with a strange power that drew my attention.
I started to imagine myself boldly preaching to
a crowd of shoppers congregating outside the entrance to the local mall. They
inquisitively listened to my proclamation of the imminent return of Jesus Christ.
Laughing at the fantasy, I thought: Who knows,
maybe the Lord wants me to become
another John Wesley; instead of preaching outdoors to coal miners, I will be
preaching to shoppers outside of malls.
I dismissed the message as something
mischievous coming from the astral realms. After all, who had ever heard of
preaching at a shopping mall? The idea was absurd.
Continuing with the meditation for about an
hour or so, I received no further inspiration and closed with a prayer
requesting that I be made a clear and pure channel for Jesus.
Later that day, I had to go to the local mall
to do some shopping. As I walked up the entryway, a fantasy suddenly flashed
into my mind. I stopped and imagined myself preaching to passersby right where
I was standing. An uncomfortable feeling filled my stomach, and my emotions
sank as fear gripped me.
“Does the
Lord really want me to start preaching down here?” I asked myself. “Oh, I
hope not”, I sighed as I took a deep breath.
“Excuse me”, a woman exclaimed as she brushed
past pushing a baby carriage, jolting me out of the daydream. I proceeded to
the store.
The next morning was Sunday. I meditated as
usual.
“I want you to go down to the mall to preach”,
the voice of conscience said firmly.
“What was that? What did you say?” was the
inquiring reply spoken in my thinking, even though I clearly heard the
instructions.
A strange sensation of warmth appeared in the
upper-central area of my back. The sensation seemed to be located in the heart
chakra region.
In my mind, I asked, “Is this some kind of
joke, or is this a real direction coming from God?”
If it's from God, I thought, what exactly does “preach”
mean? Am I supposed to go to the local mall and stand at the busy entrance,
waving a Bible in my hand as I loudly preach to the people?
“No, no, this is just wild nonsense thinking”,
I reassured myself. “My mind is getting carried away; I need to discipline my
thinking more carefully”. I tuned in to the deeper levels of my higher self,
trying to get clarification on the matter.
“Yes, I want you to start preaching to people
at Del Amo shopping mall. It is now time for your ministry to begin”, the inner
voice stated.
I broke into a cold sweat. Closing my mind's
openness to the cosmic, I brought the meditation to a prompt halt. I didn't
want to listen to any more nonsense.
During the following week, I had several
flashbacks to the fantasy of preaching to people at the mall. An uncomfortable
uneasiness gripped me every time the idea came into my mind.
I reluctantly started to entertain the idea
that maybe the Holy Spirit was
speaking to me and really was asking me to go to the mall and preach the
gospel. A morbid apprehension arose that would not go away. The command became
an obsessive “thoughtform”, a powerful and persistent idea that cried out for
action.
My meditations now clarified exactly how I was
supposed to preach to people. I was not being instructed to stand at the mall
entryway and preach. Rather, I was to approach individual people in the mall
and witness to them about Jesus Christ.
I was to tell them about his soon coming appearance on the planet.
The inner voice informed me that this
witnessing work was a form of preaching; it was preaching to individuals. The
voice stressed that this personalized preaching was a valuable work in
spreading the gospel, as well as being excellent training for future
evangelizing work of a more exalted kind.
The idea of witnessing to strangers in the
shopping mall petrified me. I resisted every command to do it. Each evening and
weekend I came up with one excuse or another as to why I was not able to go to
the local mall and witness to the lost souls.
Sometimes the excuse was, “I am not ready for
it yet”; sometimes it was, “I am not in the mood”. At other times I
deliberately procrastinated in my secular duties so that I did not have time
left in the evening to go to the mall.
In spite of loathing the witnessing idea, I
believed that if Jesus were asking me to do it, then somehow I had to be
courageous and do the work, irrespective of how much I dreaded it.
A few days later the inner voice of meditation
once again told me to witness at the local mall. Again, fear gripped me. I had
been hoping the Lord had forgotten
all about this witnessing work.
I came up with several excuses why I could not
go witnessing that evening: I was too tired; I didn't feel like it; I would not
be successful anyway; I would go tomorrow instead.
Tomorrow came. I felt awful all day at work.
The prospect of witnessing after work depressed me terribly, and I felt sick
with worry. It seemed like the stimulation to do witnessing work had completely
taken over my life. I thought about it constantly and was powerless to stop the
obsession.
“You have to do my work”, the voice of Jesus exhorted throughout the day.
I frequently looked at my watch in dread of
quitting time. Finally the dreaded hour arrived.
“I am not going to do it”, I said to myself. I
copped out, consoling myself with the thought: Tomorrow I will feel different
about it; the worry and anxiety have made me feel too fatigued to do anything
this evening.
I decided to rest up and go to bed a little
earlier than normal. Burying myself in the blankets, I welcomed sleep.
I woke up at around one o'clock in the morning,
feeling absolutely terrible. The fact that I had not obeyed the order to
witness in the mall seemed to haunt me.
The inner voice of conscience taunted me. “You
must do my work”, it asserted. “There is no escape. You have aspired to take up
your cross and follow me. Why don't you do it?”
Tossing and turning, I tried to get back to
sleep. But no sleep descended to take me out of the misery.
In my imagination I pictured people fishing in
the darkness from the pier at Redondo Beach. I was aware that even at this time
of night a handful of fishermen would be on the pier.
“Get up and witness to the fishermen right now!”
the inner voice commanded.
“Get up”, it blasted.
Wanting to hide, I pulled the bedcovers tightly
around me.
As I lay in bed, I felt so depressed that I
wanted to die. The oppressiveness was so powerful that I felt actual nausea; my
stomach then convulsed involuntarily, and I had to sit up to suppress it.
Rationalizing that Christ must have
totally forsaken me, I concluded I was feeling the utter emptiness of life
without God.
Recalling my frustrating experience of
resisting the orders to use my credit cards to make thousand-dollar donations
to support the Lighted Way, I remembered how futile my resistance was. I
perceived only two choices were before me: Either I committed suicide, or I did
exactly what Jesus was commanding. Unable to bear the terrible oppression any
longer, I had to do something.
I finally reasoned that doing the unpleasant
witnessing had to feel better than the way I was feeling, so I gave in and
decided to go witnessing to the fishermen.
As soon as I started to get out of bed, I
immediately felt better. I perceived that this scenario was in operation: if I
obeyed God, I felt better; if I
disobeyed him, I felt depressed as he withdrew his grace.
In the quiet of the night, as I slowly got
dressed, a particular biblical text came into my mind. Jesus is making a
statement to Peter:
“Feed my sheep.... When you were younger you
dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old ... someone
else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:17, 18).
Having read the text a few days before, I now
applied it to my situation. I thought: When I was younger I did as I pleased,
living a rebellious and worldly life. Now that I am older, God is leading me to places where I do not want to go.
I concluded that there could be no turning back
from my ministry. My choice was to obey God or face the deathly depression of
separation from him.
Picking up my Bible, I left the apartment and
drove toward the pier.
The Mastermind's demons had gained total
control over my life. I had become a slave to their will. The fact that I carried
a Bible and preached about Jesus Christ
did not mean that I was a true witness for Christ, even though I looked like
one.
In reward for my obedience to his dictates, the
demon with the masquerade of “Jesus” told me to take a vacation visit to the Findhorn
New Age community in Scotland. My colleagues at Findhorn were surprised and
bewildered by my statements declaring that I was now a follower of “Jesus
Christ”, the only divine “Son of God”, the “King of kings” and “Lord” of all
New Age Masters. Faced with their astonishment, I did not push the issue,
concluding they simply were not ready for the “revelation knowledge” I was
privy to.
Overall, the vacation was enjoyable, with only
one mishap. On the return train journey, while traveling through the snow-covered
mountains and forests of northern Scotland, I lost one of my personal diaries.
These journals meticulously recorded all the details of important events along
my New Age discipleship path. As I had begun that particular journal only a
short time before, its loss was not disastrous. However, during the remainder
of the journey back to Los Angeles, I wondered if the diary's disappearance was
some kind of omen with esoteric significance.
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Chapter 11
