We know this author’s story is a candid one, but we wanted to let him explain it in his own words as much as possible – and to show what it was that God, through His sovereign grace and mighty power, saved this man from. This series is lengthy, but an amazing reminder that God STILL works!
In case you missed the previous posts in “Out of the Darkness” series . . . the links are as follows:
I write it in the hope it may be of value to those who have not experienced what I have and also to chronicle another puzzle-piece of the falling away of the church.
Out of the Darkness {Personal Testimony} – Part 5
During this time, I worked on few concepts for dot-com startups with Ned, but there were complications to getting each one launched. Originally, I felt like I just had bad luck, but after working so hard, the only conclusion I could come to was that I was under some sort of curse. There were just so many bills and debts piling up. I often imagined while in the office, we might receive a notice the air bill had not been paid and our supply of fresh air would be turned off. Morale was at an all-time low.
People started leaving for work that actually paid and the owner eventually closed the office. I was sick of making peanuts and sharing operational risks with my employers, so I decided to become my own boss. It sounded really slick on paper, but there was always fine print. I was always ready for a challenge, so I started a partnership with Ned. He did seem interested in these business ideas and I had some time to work on it. Ned brought the startup capital from a credit card with 0% interest for a year. There were many challenges but progress was slow and steady. I had always been an introvert and did not have much social experience as an adult. It was a different sort of challenge to learn to do sales and marketing. Ned was doing the finance and was going to handle the management of the business aspects.
After starting the business with Ned, it soon became apparent he did not quite have the same zeal for making the business a success. He seemed more interested in legal details, lengthy meetings, and irrelevant operational formalities. As time continued, I realized I would be handling the majority of the work, while sharing profits with someone who increasingly seemed more interested in controlling my life through the finances of the company and often breaking off contact and acting excessively emotional when important decisions needed to be made than he was in generating a profit. Eventually, it became abundantly clear the partnership would not be viable.
I met Ellie at a “How to Make Small Talk” seminar in Los Angeles. The feeling was electric and mutual. Other people noticed. I couldn’t stop looking at her and we talked for hours. We were on the phone for hours every day for the next few months. Although I did not realize it at the time, she was the bodily manifestation of nearly every response I had given from the Law of Attraction paper. It was as though she was conjured for me. Early on, she gave me a book from Brian Weiss on past lives. While reading it, I started to have a vision about a man in old Arabia searching for his lost daughter. He was wailing with such extreme intensity and looking for her everywhere in the desert. I was her manager and she performed acts with singing and dancing. We worked for a traveling circus and lived quite well. Our tent was decorated with exotic cloths and we had our own servants. I was shown later she was kidnapped by another man who was jealous and wanted to make her into his wife. The tears and emotion were extremely real.
In another vision, we were brother and sister in rural Holland in the 1500s. We had a calm, peaceful life living together and one day, an officer from the government showed up, arrested and killed one of us. I wasn’t allowed to see which one. There were a few mannerisms Ellie had that carried over from the vision that would not leave my memory.
She had a large family with an alcoholic father who left early in her life and an overburdened mother. She lived with a boyfriend in a single bedroom apartment in Torrance who she claimed was regularly violent and abusive. He was a pretty boy, a smooth talker, and a scam artist. I must admit, I viewed him somewhat as the man who kidnapped my daughter.
What ensued over the next few months was pure chaos. There was constant work, headache, stress and very little sleep. Ned had restricted access to finances and had mostly cut off communication and appeared to be acting jealous. Ellie was indecisive in the process. She would move from her apartment to my mother’s house to her mother’s house. There was a storage locker and a constant shuffling of boxes. For a while, she stayed in a woman’s shelter in a secure, undisclosed location. Then she was living at a hotel. She claimed her family had mostly abandoned her. While staying at her mother’s house, she had an incident where she was in the ER room for a few days and claimed to have had food poisoning. I never found out exactly what happened, but she said she thought her mother may have poisoned her. Eventually, she settled down in a studio apartment in Torrance, just two blocks away from her old apartment.
I helped Ellie to secure a restraining order process on the old boyfriend. She said he was controlling and violent and once pointed a knife at her and threatened to kill her. She was very emotional and I believed her. Ellie appeared to be despondent much of the time and would sleep for almost the entire day for about a year. She was also prone to strange emotional outbursts. I figured she would eventually grow beyond the trauma and move on with her life.
After Ellie’s move had settled down, I had an incident with my mother. I don’t remember the substance of the argument, except that I was in my room and she was yelling and screaming at me. She pushed the door into me several times. The door hit me in my face and my nose started to bleed. I went outside and contemplated what to do. Naively, I remembered the police saying I could call them if I ever needed help, so I did. They came quickly, spoke separately to my mother and me, and within minutes, I was handcuffed in the back of the police car.
Ned bailed me out of jail. Ellie was waiting for me at the police station and helped me move my items into our cars. While we were moving my stuff, my mother was yelling at both of us the whole time and pushed the door into Ellie. That was the last time I ever saw my mother.
I stayed with Ellie at her studio apartment for a few weeks and eventually found a room to rent in a condo in Long Beach. My new roommate was an Iraq war veteran and would regularly yell and scream in the middle of the night like he was still in battle. I was usually so completely exhausted from work that I could usually sleep through it. It was much better than living with mom.
Ned was holding the business hostage. I couldn’t make a living at it and I couldn’t afford to buy him out, so I started working evenings as a security guard. For nine months, I worked in excess of 100 hours per week. I generally slept 4 hours per night at best. Sundays were a luxury and I could sleep for 6 hours before going to work. Eventually, Ned decided to leave.
Business was picking up a bit. Ellie was managing the finances and we moved into an apartment right across from the beach. I left my security job and went back to sleeping like a normal person. It was the first time in my adult life where I felt some sort of fleeting peace and comfort. Long Beach was a mixed bag. I loved living by the beach, but it was a very big, hectic city and parking and noise were always issues. One time when coming home from I work, I was taking a business call on my cell phone when a strange man approached me to see if he could come up to my room with me. The gay scene was a very big part of Long Beach.
In Long Beach, I was involved with the various spiritual scenes. I found the Orin and DaBen series and became acquainted with my spirit guides. Ellie spent a few nights asking my spirit guide questions about her lost father and seemed very pleased with the answers. It became a regular practice for me to spend time meditating on a lifeguard tower overlooking the ocean and communicating with my spirit guides. At night, I would sometimes practice astral travel and remote viewing. *these are both willful out-of-the-body experiences*
In 2007, Ellie and I attended an event of The Secret and I spoke at length with Jack Canfield (co-author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series). I also spoke with Lee Brower, an estate planner and professed Christian who was involved with the law of attraction who became a rather prominent guru and speaker on the topic of gratitude rocks. When his daughter was dealing with drug problems and going into rehab, he turned his faith to a rock that he found on the beach and decided to think of what he was grateful for each time he touched the rock. After evangelizing this practice, he became incredibly wealthy and successful and had distributed gratitude rocks to many people throughout the world. I asked him why he didn’t petition his God about the problems and he responded that he didn’t believe God was involved with everything.
For some time, Ellie and I had vision manifesting boards. As a birthday present, I purchased reiki training for Ellie from a woman who was in one of my business groups.
My spirit guides told me about many things.
They said all energy was made of vibration and light and that we were coming into a new age of light and vibration where the children of light would awaken the world and lead everyone into a new age where there were no barriers between the physical and spiritual.
They also showed me visions about upcoming earth changes and that Long Beach would eventually be entirely underwater. I followed their other prophets including David Icke and David Wilcock. All of the messages each of us were given lined up with each other. I also read messages translated from channelers in Europe and Asia, and the message was global and universal for humanity. It was a very real thing that was happening.
There was a lengthy dialogue with the spirit guides. One was an elderly Jewish man named Mikah. The other claimed to live at a higher dimension of existence and never inhabited an earthly form. There was never a mentioning of who God was, just the continuous, progressive unraveling of existence, graduating from lower forms to higher forms and people working with people who graduated (i.e. spirit beings) to complete the process. I once asked who Jesus was and was told he was a very wise man, but not God . . .
To be continued . . .
Out of the Darkness Testimony Series
We believe in the inerrancy and sufficiency of the Scriptures. Jesus said, “Thy Word is truth.” And so we not only believe it, we also base our worldview upon it.
Donna Wray says
Can’t wait to read the next entry. I think this needs to turn into a book! God bless, love, Mother Wray
The Editors says
It’s worth considering putting into a little booklet!