The Beginning
I was born in Kenya during the Mau Mau uprising, in which my father fought. I grew up in South Africa through the bush warfare, (where I later attended seminary (SATS) after college). Then Botswana for five years. I finished college in Northern Ireland at the time of the heaviest unrest of the 70’s, and now live in Europe.
Learning from a jailbird
I started my Christian walk just before my 21st birthday in 1978 on a gold mine in South Africa. Being new on the mines I had to go through the induction course, part of which was learning the Bantu language to be able to communicate with the migrant workers. I found myself in a big classroom with only one other working colleague, which, on the part of my colleague, was a miracle in that the gold mines do not employ people with criminal records, yet this guy I was studying with was just six months out of jail for house breaking & theft.
I was intrigued with his story but then he started telling me about Jesus, which really irritated me. But after eight days of being shut up in a classroom with this ex-con, I started seeing that he had changed from what his former self was, and so I started listening more attentively. It wasn’t long after that that I became a Christian myself.
Back then the Charismatic movement was starting to make headway with the “Jesus Only” (Oneness) movement, popularized by public figures such as the famous gospel singer / songwriter Larry Norman. Being a musician myself, I was drawn to the movement and joined in the outreach group in our town, witnessing tirelessly to people in the street and at work to their annoyance, but with some success.
However, through the years the leaders I once looked up to fell from grace one by one and left me disillusioned. I left our church and the mines and headed for the coast drifting from job to job, while trying to look for answers that made sense. I wandered from church to church, asking questions that no one had logical answers to. So I settled into the rut of church-attending, and conned myself into believing that since I was baptised (in a mountain river on a cold and rainy morning) and spoke in so-called “tongues” and confessed the Name of Christ that I was ok. But for years my conscience was not settled.
Years later I stopped wandering from job to job and settled down as a family man. I joined a large church of some thousand plus members and quietly kept out of trouble by keeping relatively silent about my questions.
The Change
But then I inherited unwanted Christian books which sat on my shelves collecting dust, until one day I decided to read one of them. These books were from old-school Christianity when holiness meant something for the Christian. I read one book, then another, until I was reading up to five books at a time cross-referencing them with each other and my Bible. I spent hours a day devouring these books, and praying well into the morning many nights. But I couldn’t believe what I was reading. There were real people who lived like the Christians we read about in the Bible.
Then came the questions again
But my questions haunted me, so I started presenting them to my new leaders who once again could not answer them satisfactorily. So, I started knocking on doors of other pastors around the large area in which I lived, to the extent that the pastors got together to discuss the “Hugh problem”; which was my disturbing questions about what they were preaching. This has spanned Oneness professors, Calvinists, Armenians, Catholics and those in between. No one could give satisfactory answers to my questions.
Don’t let them fool you
After only a couple of years of following church teachings, I ran more wild than I ever did before. Later I turned to skydiving, joined a touring motor stunt team, developing stunts from my gymnastic background (me on top). (We took over the world’s best motor balance stunt team at the time within the first year of our performing). I learnt how to do things I didn’t do before, many of which I later regretted. And I couldn’t reconcile being saved from sin and still living in it. (An absurdity in essence).
Many teachers / leaders claim that we are sinners saved by grace. But don’t let any of them fool you into an eternity without Christ. I have written my posts (now 40+ years after my first encounter with the ex-con colleague) from years of experience and research. To date they have been irrefutable by many claiming leadership in churches. After 24 years of “doing” church, I decided that since no one could give satisfactory answers to my questions, I would then assume to know nothing and start again, exploring the true doctrines of the bible as taught by the apostles (which has nothing to do with the false Apostles Creed). My posts here cover my findings.
After 40+ Years
After 40+ years of professing Christ, with much study, and probably too many debates, I have realised that God is reasonable according to the universally understood reasoning given to all moral creatures. And He has given that reasoning to anyone with an honest heart that desires truth no matter where it may lead them.
However, for those who find it, will also find themselves estranged from the common church circles. Nevertheless, they will obtain as a result, a perpetual peace that transcends understanding – a peace that most in the modern church in general will not have. Not because they can’t have it; but like Charles Finney once stated: “it’s because they WILL NOT have it”. That is; they will not choose to have it because of the price required to obtain it.
I love God’s church. For it is the voice of Christ on earth (or should be). However, I am saddened at its fallen state. And I have come to realise that Christ is not saving the universal church of self-professing “Christians”. Only those who choose to do His will in loving obedience are the ones He will receive. These are far and few between. Jesus has said that He will take one from a town and another one from a family, etc. But like the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, Israel from Egypt, few there are in number as a percentage who will finally enter the promised land of heaven.
This site is dedicated to help those find the answers that many cannot / will not answer, in the hopes that they would obtain the assurance of faith that leads to eternal life.
And for those of you who still disagree after reading my posts with an honest heart after truth, feel free to contend your case with me. Eternity is too long to leave this earth not having pursued truth to live by it.
Some “troubling” questions they cannot answer:
- How are we really saved?
- Why did God make the physical / materialistic realm when He already had the spiritual?
- Why did God, who hates sin, make man as the cherished creation, knowing that he would sin against Him? And why did He decide to make man knowing that to do so He, through Christ would have to die painfully on man’s behalf – the Creator dying for the created and by the hands of whom He created?
- Where in the Bible does it say even once that true believers are sinners? (Rom. 3:23 or 5:12 doesn’t say it either).
- How can they preach that believers will never lose their salvation when scripture clearly and repeatedly states that we live in the hope of salvation (1Thes 5:8), which is to materialise and be revealed only at the judgement (1Pet.1:5)?
- How can they preach that we can never escape from sinning in this life when God promised that Jesus came to set us free from the power of sin (Matt 1:21)?
- How do they explain that Christians DO NOT believe in a polytheistic god, yet preach that God exists in three separate persons, none of which is the other?
- Did Jesus die in the flesh only and not in the spirit? Where does it say that?
- How do they say that Jesus is “fully man and fully God” (an absurdity in the expression itself), yet without being able to give even one in-context verse in scripture to prove it?
- If believers die before they repent of their last sin, will they get to heaven when the Bible clearly states that their sin separates them from God?
- If all are born sinners and are condemned to hell because of it, except for those who supposedly have salvation thrust on them without their consent (as Calvinists preach), then how cruel is God to send us to hell just for being born – innocent infants included?
- If the Bible says that no one gets to see the Father in peace unless they are sanctified (Heb 12:14), then when are we able to be assured of our sanctification and consequently salvation if it’s a never-ending process as many believe?
- How do we exercise the faith that will ensure our salvation? For belief itself is not faith, for even the demons believe the accounts of Christ, yet salvation is not offered to them.
- If sin separates us from God and heaven, then how do we defeat sin in our lives?
- If speaking in so-called “tongues” of today is true, and is supposed to be given to us by the almighty Holy Spirit of God who has endless creativity, then why is the “vocabulary” so garbled and limited?
- If the testimony of history reveals the wickedness in the early church fathers, and if the universal (catholic) church is found to have been so evil, why do the protestants still adopt most of their false doctrines without question?
- If the apostles thought that Christ’s return was immanent in their time, then why does Christ wait so long to return?
- Why can’t Satan and the rest of the demonic hosts ever inherit salvation?
I could go on and on, but my posts will answer these troubling questions and more, reasonably and biblically. These answers will enable you to obtain a peace with the knowledge of the truth of these matters that leads to salvation (James 1: 21).